
i i!i 




Class ^H h^j-Q 
Book U J^^^ 
Copyright iN'? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Next of Kin 



The Next of Kin 

'Those who Wait and Wonder 



By 

Nellie L^ McClung 

Author of "Sowing Seeds in Denny," '^TAe Second Chance,' 
"r>4< Black Creek Stopping House," and 
"In Timet Hie These" 




Boston and New York 

Houghton Mifflin Company 

dbe iRibEtjsfitic ]prc«ji Cambtibfle 

1917 






COPYRIGHT, I917, BY NELLIE L. MCCLUNG 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published November igij 



/ >S 



5 1817 



©CI.A479075 



HOPE 

Down through the ages, a picture has come of the woman who 
weepeth: 
Tears are her birthright, and sorrow and sadness her portion: 
Weeping endures for a night, and prolongeth its season 
Far in the day, with the will of God 
For a reason! 

Such has the world long accepted, as fitting and real; 

Plentiful have been the causes of grief, without stinting; 
Patient and sad have the women accepted the ruling. 

Learning lifers lessons, with hardly a word of complaint 
At the schooling. 

But there^s a limit to tears, even tears, and a new note is sound- 
ing: 
Hitherto they have wept without hope, never seeing an end- 
ing; 
Noiu hope has dawned in their poor lonely hearts. 

And a message they \e sending 
Over the world to their sisters in weeping, a message is flashing, 
Flashing the brighter, for the skies are so dark 
And war thunders crashing! 
And this is the message the war-stricken women send out 
In their sorrow: 
"Yesterday and to-day have gone wrong, 
But we still have to-morrow!" 



Contents 



Foreword i 

I. Beach Days 22 

II. Working In! 35 

III. Let's Pretend 46 

IV. Pictures 53 

V. Saving our Souls 58 

VI. Surprises 70 

VII. Conservation 92 

VIII. "Permission" 112 

IX. The Slacker — in Uniform 142 

X. National Service — One Way . . . .154 

XI. The Orphan 171 

XII. The War-Mother 193 

XIII. The Believing Church 210 

XIV. The Last Reserves 227 

XV. Life's Tragedy 241 

XVI. Waiting! 247 



The Next of Kin 

FOREWORD 

It was a bleak day in November, with a thick, 
gray sky, and a great, noisy, blustering wind 
that had a knack of facing you, no matter 
which way you were going; a wind that would 
be in ill-favor anywhere, but in northern Al- 
berta, where the wind is not due to blow at all, 
it was what the really polite people call "im- 
possible." Those who were not so polite called 
it something quite different, but the meaning is 
the same. 

There are districts, not so very far from us, 
where the wind blows so constantly that the 
people grow accustomed to it; they depend on 
it; some say they like it; and when by a rare 
chance it goes down for a few hours, they be- 
come nervous, panicky, and apprehensive, al- 
ways listening, expecting something to happen. 
But we of the windless North, with our sunlit 

I 



The Next of Kin 

spaces, our quiet days and nights, grow peevish, 
petulant, and full of grouch when the wind 
blows. We will stand anything but that. We 
resent wind; it is not in the bond; we will have 
none of it! 

"You won't have many at the meeting to- 
day," said the station agent cheerfully, when I 
went into the small waiting-room to wait for 
the President of the Red Cross Society, who 
wanted to see me before the meeting. "No, you 
won't have many a day like this, although there 
are some who will come out, wind or no wind, to 
hear a woman speak — it 's just idle curiosity, 
that's all it is." 

"Oh, come," I said, "be generous; maybe 
they really think that she may have something 
to say!" 

"Well, you see," said this amateur philoso- 
pher, as he dusted the gray-painted sill of the 
wicket with a large red-and-white handkerchief, 
"it is great to hear a woman speak in public, 
anjrway, even if she does not do it very well. 
It's sorto' like seeing a pony walking |on its 
hind legs; it's clever even if it's not natural. 

2 



Foreword 

You will have some all right — I 'm going over 
myself. There would have been a big crowd In 
if It had n't been for the wind. You see, you Ve 
never been here before and that all helps.'* 

Then the President of the Red Cross Society 
came and conducted me to the house quite near 
the station where I was to be entertained. My 
hostess, who came to the door herself In answer 
to our ring, was a sweet-faced, little Southern 
woman transplanted here in northern Canada, 
who with true Southern hospitality and thought- 
fulness asked me if I would not like to step right 
upstairs and "handsome up a bit" before I 
went to the meeting, — " not but what you 're 
looking right peart," she added quickly. 

When I was shown upstairs to the spare room 
and was well into the business of " handsoming 
up," I heard a small voice at the door speak- 
ing my name. I opened the door and found 
there a small girl of about seven years of age, 
who timidly asked if she might come in. I told 
her that I was just dressing and would be glad 
to have her at some other time. But she quickly 
assured me that it was right now that she wished 

3 



The Next of Kin 

to come in, for she would like to see how I 
dressed. I thought the request a strange one 
and brought the small person in to hear more 
of it. She told me, 

"I heard my mamma and some other ladies 
talking about you," she said, "and wondering 
what you would be like; and they said that 
women like you who go out making speeches 
never know how to dress themselves, and they 
said that they bet a cent that you just flung 
your clothes on, — and do you.^* Because I 
think it must be lovely to be able to fling your 
clothes on — and I wish I could ! Don't you tell 
that I told you, will you ? — but that is why I 
came over. I live over there," — she pointed to 
a house across the street, — "and I often come 
to this house. I brought over a jar of cream this 
morning. My mamma sent it over to Mrs. 
Price, because she was having you stay here." 

"That was very kind of your mamma," I 
said, much pleased with this evidence of her 
mother's good-will. 

"Oh, yes," said my visitor. "My mamma 
says she always likes to help people out when 

4 



Foreword 

they are In trouble. But no one knows that I 
am here but just you and me. I watched and 
watched for you, and when you came nobody 
was looking and I slipped out and came right 
in, and never knocked — nor nothin'." 

I assured my small guest that mum was the 
word, and that I should be delighted to have 
her for a spectator while I went on with the 
process of making myself look as nice as nature 
would allow. But she was plainly disappointed 
when she found that I was not one bit quicker 
about dressing than plenty of others, even 
though she tried to speed me up a little. 

Soon the President came for me and took me 
to the Municipal Hall, where the meeting was 
to be held. 

I knew, just as soon as I went In, that it was 
going to be a good meeting. There was a dis- 
tinct air of preparedness about everything — 
some one had scrubbed the floor and put flags 
on the wall and flowers in the windows; over In 
the corner there was a long, narrow table piled 
up with cups and saucers, with cake and sand- 
wiches carefully covered from sight; but I knew 

5 



The Next of Kin 

what caused the lumpiness under the white 
cloth. Womanly Instinct — which has been 
declared a safer guide than man's reasoning — 
told me that there were going to be refresh- 
ments, and the delightful odor of coffee, which 
escaped from the tightly closed boiler on the 
stove, confirmed my deductions. Then I no- 
ticed that a handbill on the wall spoke freely 
of it, and declared that every one was invited to 
stay, although there did not seem to be much 
need of this invitation — certainly there did 
not seem to be any climatic reason for any one's 
leaving any place of shelter; for now the wind, 
confirming our worst suspicions of it, began 
to drive frozen splinters of sleet against the 
windows. 

By three o'clock the hall was full, — women 
mostly, for it was still the busy time for the 
men on the farms. Many of the women brought 
their children with them. Soon after I began to 
speak, the children fell asleep, tired out with 
struggling with wind and weather, and content 
to leave the afiFairs of state with any one who 
wanted them. But the women watched me 

6 



Foreword 

with eager faces which seemed to speak back to 
me. The person who drives ten miles against 
a head wind over bad roads to hear a lecture is 
not generally disposed to slumber. The faces 
of these women were so bright and interested 
that, when it was over, it seemed to me that it 
had been a conversation where all had taken 
part. 

The things that I said to them do not mat- 
ter; they merely served as an introduction to 
what came after, when we sat around the stove 
and the young girls of the company brought us 
coffee and sandwiches, and mocha cake and 
home-made candy, and these women told me 
some of the things that are near their hearts. 

"I drove fourteen miles to-day," said one 
woman, "but those of us who live long on the 
prairie do not mind these things. We were two 
hundred miles from a railway when we went in 
first, and we only got our mail 'in the spring.' 
Now, when we have a station within fourteen 
miles and a post-office on the next farm, we feel 
we are right in the midst of things, and I suppose 
we do not really mind the inconveniences that 

7 



The Next of Kin 

would seem dreadful to some people. We have 
done without things all our lives, always hoping 
for better things to come, and able to bear 
things that were disagreeable by telling our- 
selves that the children would have things 
easier than we had had them. We have had 
frozen crops; we have had hail; we have had 
serious sickness; but we have not complained, 
for all these things seemed to be God's doings, 
and no one could help it. We took all this — 
face upwards ; but with the war — it is different. 
The war Is not God's doings at all. Nearly all 
the boys from our neighborhood are gone, and 
some are not coming back — " 

She stopped abruptly, and a silence fell on 
the group of us. She fumbled for a moment in 
her large black purse, and then handed me an 
envelope, worn, battered. It was addressed to 
a soldier in France and it had not been opened. 
Across the corner. In red Ink, was written the 
words, "Killed In action." 

"My letters are coming back now," she said 
simply. "Alex was my eldest boy, and he went 
at the first call for men, and he was only eighteen 

8 



Foreword 

— he came through Salnt-Eloi and Festubert — 
But this happened in September." 

The woman who sat beside her took up the 
theme. "We have talked a lot about this at our 
Red Cross meetings. What do the women of 
the world think of war.^* No woman ever 
wanted war, did she? No woman could bring a 
child into the world, suffering for it, caring for 
it, loving it, without learning the value of 
human life, could she? War comes about be- 
cause human life Is the cheapest thing In the 
world; it has been taken at man's estimate, and 
that is entirely too low. Now, we have been 
wondering what can be done when this war is 
over to form a league of women to enforce 
peace. There is enough sentiment In the world 
in favor of human life If we could bind It up 
some way." 

I gazed at the eager faces before me — In 
astonishment. Did I ever hear high-browed 
ladies In distant cities talk of the need of edu- 
cation in the country districts ? 

"Well-kept homes and hand-knit socks will 
never save the world," said Alex's mother. 

9 



The Next of Kin 

"Look at Germany! The German women are 
kind, patient, industrious, frugal, hard-work- 
ing, everything that a woman ought to be, but 
it did not save them, or their country, and it 
will not save us. We have allowed men to have 
control of the big things in life too long. While 
we worked — or played — they have ruled. 
My nearest neighbor is a German, and she and 
I have talked these things over. She feels just 
the same as we do, and she sews for our Red 
Cross. She says she could not knit socks for 
our soldiers, for they are enemies, but she makes 
bandages, for she says wounded men are not 
enemies, and she is willing to do anything for 
them. She wanted to come to-day to hear you, 
but her husband would not let her have a horse, 
because he says he does not believe in women 
speaking in public, anyway! I wanted her to 
come with us even if he did not like it, but she 
said that she dared not." 

"Were you not afraid of making trouble .f"' 
I asked. 

Alex's mother smiled. "A quick, sharp fight 
is the best and clears up things. I would rather 

10 



Foreword 

be a rebel any time than a slave. But of course 
it is easy for me to talk! I have always been 
treated like a human being. Perhaps it is just 
as well that she did not come. Old Hans has 
long generations back of him to confirm him in 
his theory that women are intended to be men's 
bondservants and that is why they are made 
smaller; it will all take time — and other things. 
The trouble has been with all of us that we 
have expected time to work out all of our diffi- 
culties, and it won't; there is no curative qual- 
ity in time! And what I am most afraid of is 
that we will settle down after the war, and slip 
right back into our old ways, — our old peace- 
ful ways, — and let men go on ruling the world, 
and war will come again and again. Men have 
done their very best, — I am not feeling hard to 
them, — but I know, and the thoughtful men 
know, that men alone can never free the world 
from the blight of war; and if we go on, too 
gentle and sweet to assert ourselves, knitting, 
nursing, bringing children into the world, it will 
surely come to pass, when we are old, perhaps, 
and not able to do anything, — but suffer, — 

II 



The Next of Kin 

that war will come again, and we shall see our 
daughters' children or our granddaughters' chil- 
dren sent off to fight, and their heart-broken 
mothers will turn on us accusing eyes and say 
to us, *You went through all this — you knew 
what this means — why did n't you do some- 
thing?' That Is my bad dream when I sit knit- 
ting, because I feel hard toward the women that 
are gone. They were a poor lot, many of them. 
I like now best of all Jennie Geddes who threw 
the stool at somebody's head. I forget what 
Jennie's grievance was, but it was the principle 
that counts — she had a conviction, and was 
willing to fight for it. I never said these things 
— until I got this." She still held the letter, 
with its red inscription, in her hand. "But now 
I feel that I have earned the right to speak out. 
I have made a heavy investment in the cause of 
Humanity and I am going to look after it. The 
only thing that makes it possible to give up 
Alex is the hope that Alex's death may help to 
make war impossible and so save other boys. 
But unless we do something his death will not 
help a bit; for this thing has always been — and 

12 



Foreword 

that is the Intolerable thought to me. I am 
willing to give my boy to die for others If I am 
sure that the others are going to be saved, but 
I am not willing that he should die in vain. 
You see what I mean, don't you.?" 

I told her that I did see, and that I believed 
that she had expressed the very thought that 
was In the mind of women everywhere. 

"Well, then," she said quickly, "why don't 
you write It.'' We will forget this when It Is all 
over and we will go back to our old pursuits and 
there will be nothing — I mean, no record of 
how we felt. Anyway, we will die and a new 
generation will take our places. Why don't you 
write It while your heart is hot?" 

"But," I said, "perhaps what I should write 
would not truly represent what the women are 
thinking. They have diverse thoughts, and 
how can I hope to speak for them.'"' 

"Write what you feel," she said sternly. 
"These are fundamental things. Ideas are 
epidemic — they go like the measles. If you 
are thinking a certain thing, you may be sure 
you have no monopoly of It; many others are 

13 



The Next of Kin 

thinking it too. That is my greatest comfort at 
this time. Write down what you feel, even if it 
is not what you think you ought to feel. Write 
it down for all of us!" 

And that is how it happened. There In the 
Municipal Hall in the small town of Ripston, as 
we sat round the stove that cold November day, 
with the sleet sifting against the windows, I got 
my commission from these women, whom I had 
not seen until that day, to tell what we think 
and feel, to tell how it looks to us, who are the 
mothers of soldiers, and to whom even now the 
letter may be on its way with its curt inscription 
across the corner. I got my commission there 
to tell fearlessly and hopefully the story of the 
Next of Kin. 1 

It will be written in many ways, by many 
people, for the brand of this war is not only on 
our foreheads, but deep in our hearts, and it 
will be reflected in all that our people write for 
many years to come. The trouble is that most 
of us feel too much to write well ; for it is hard to 
write of the things which lie so heavy on our 
hearts; but the picture is not all dark — no plc- 

14 



Foreword 

ture can be. If it is all dark, it ceases to be a 
picture and becomes a blot. Belgium has its 
tradition of deathless glory, its imperishable 
memories of gallant bravery which lighten its 
darkness and make It shine like noonday. The 
one unlightened tragedy of the world to-day is 
Germany. 

I thought of these things that night when I 
was being entertained at the Southern woman's 
hospitable home. 

"It pretty near took a war to make these 
English women friendly to each other and to 
Americans. I lived here six months before any 
of them called on me, and then I had to go and 
dig them out; but I was not going to let them 
go on In such a mean way. They told me then 
that they were waiting to see what church I 
was going to; and then I rubbed it into them 
that they were a poor recommend for any 
church, with their mean, unnelghborly ways; 
for If a church does not teach people to be 
friendly I think It ought to be burned down, 
don't you } I told them I could not take much 
stock In that hymn about *We shall know each 

15 



The Next of Kin 

other there,' when they did not seem a bit 
anxious about knowing each other here, which 
is a heap more important; for in heaven we will 
all have angels to play with, but here we only 
have each other, and it Is right lonesome when 
they won't come out and play! But I tell you 
things have changed for the better since the 
war, and now we knit and sew together, and 
forgive each other for being Methodists and 
Presbyterians; and, do you know? I made a 
speech one night, right out loud so everybody 
could hear me, in a Red Cross meeting, and 
that is what I thought that I could never do. 
But I got feeling so anxious about the prisoners 
of war in Germany that I could n't help making 
an appeal for them; and I was so keen about it, 
and wanted every one of those dear boys to get 
a square meal, that I forgot all about little Mrs. 
Price, and I was not caring a cent whether she 
was doing herself proud or not. And when I got 
done the people were using their handkerchiefs, 
and I was sniffing pretty hard myself, but we 
raised eighty-five dollars then and there, and 
now I know I will never be scared again. I 

i6 



Foreword 

used to think it was so ladylike to be nervous 
about speaking, and now I know it is just a 
form of selfishness. I was simply scared that I 
would not do well, thinking all the time of my- 
self. But now everything has changed and I am 
ready to do anything I can." 

"Go on," I said; "tell me some more. Re- 
member that you women to-day made me 
promise to write down how this war is hitting 
us, and I merely promised to write what I heard 
and saw. I am not going to make up anything, 
so you are all under obligation to tell me all 
you can. I am not to be the author of this book, 
but only the historian." 

"It won't be hard," she said encouragingly. 
"There is so much happening every day that 
it will be harder to decide what to leave out 
than to find things to put in. In this time of 
excitement the lid is oflp, I tell you ; the bars are 
down; we can see right into the hearts of people. 
It is like a fire or an earthquake when all the 
doors are open and the folks are carrying their 
dearest possessions into the street, and they 
are all real people now, and they have lost all 

17 



The Next of Kin 

their little mincing airs and all their lawdie- 
daw. But believe me, we have been some 
fiddlers! When I look around this house I see 
evidence of it everywhere; look at that abomi- 
nation now" — She pointed to an elaborately 
beaded match-safe which hung on the wall. 
t It bore on it the word, "Matches," in ornate 
letters, all made of beads, but I noticed that its 
empty condition belied the inscription. 

"Think of the hours of labor that some one 
has put on that," she went on scornfully, "and 
now it is such an aristocrat that it takes up all 
its time at that and has no time to be useful. I 
know now that it never really intended to hold 
matches, but simply lives to mock the honest 
seeker who really needs a match. I have been a 
real sinner myself," she went on after a pause; 
" I have been a fiddler, all right. I may as well 
make a clean breast of it, — I made that match- 
safe and nearly bored my eyes out doing it, and 
was so nervous and cross that I was not fit to 
live with." 

"I can't believe that," I said. 

"Well, I sure was some snappy. I have 
i8 



Foreword 

teased out towel ends, and made patterns on 
them; I've punched holes In linen and sewed 
them up again — there is no form of foolishness 
that I have not committed — and liked it! But 
now I have ceased to be a fiddler and have be- 
come a citizen, and I am going to try to be a 
real good spoke in the wheel of progress. I can't 
express it very well, but I am going to try to 
link up with the people next me and help them 
along. Perhaps you know what I mean — I 
think it is called team-play." 

When the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa 
were burning, the main switch which controlled 
the lighting was turned off by mistake and the 
whole place was plunged into darkness, and 
this added greatly to the horror and danger. 
The switch was down a long passage through 
which the smoke was rolling, and it seemed Im- 
possible for any one to make the journey and 
return. Then the people who were there formed 
a chain, by holding each other's hands — a 
great human chain. So that the one who went 
ahead felt the sustaining power of the one who 
came behind him. If he stumbled and fell, the 

19 



The Next of Kin 

man behind him helped him to his feet and 
encouraged him to go on. In this way the 
switch was reached, the Hght was turned on, 
and many Hves were saved. 

Over the world to-day roll great billows of 
hatred and misunderstanding, which have dark- 
ened the whole face of the earth. We believe 
that there is a switch if we could get to it, but 
the smoke blinds us and we are choked with 
our tears. Perhaps if we join hands all of us will 
be able to do what a few of us could never do. 
This reaching-out of feeble human hands, this 
new compelling force which is going to bind us 
all together, this deep desire for cohesion which 
swells in our hearts and casts out all smallness 
and all self-seeking — this is what we mean 
when we speak of the Next of Kin. It is not a 
physical relationship, but the great spiritual 
bond which unites all those whose hearts have 
grown more tender by sorrow, and whose spirit- 
ual eyes are not dimmed, but washed clearer by 
their tears ! 



Sing a song of hearts grown tender. 

With the sorrow and the pain ; 
Sorrow is a great old mender, 

Love can give, — and give again. 
Love 'j a prodigal old spender, — 
And the jolliest old lender, 
For he never turns away 

Any one who comes to borrow, 
If they say their stock is slender. 

And they We sorely pressed by sorrow! 
Never has been known to say, — 
**/F^ are short ourselves to-day, — 

Can't you come again to-morrow ?^^ 
That has never been Love's way ! 

And he 's rich beyond all telling, 

Love divine all love excelling! 



CHAPTER I 

BEACH DAYS 

When a soldier's watch, with its luminous face. 

Loses its light and grows dim and black, 
He holds it out in the sun a space 

And the radiance all comes back; 
And that is the reason I'm thinking to-day 

Of the glad days now long past; 
I am leaving my heart where the sunbeams play: 

I am trying to drive my fears away: 
I am charging my soul with a spirit gay, 

And hoping that it will last! 

We were the usual beach crowd, with our 
sport suits, our silk sweaters, our Panama hats, 
our veranda teas and week-end guests, our long, 
lovely, lazy afternoons In hammocks beside the 
placid waters of Lake Winnipeg. Life was easy 
and pleasant, as we told ourselves life ought to 
be in July and August, when people work hard 
all year and then come away to the quiet green- 
ness of the big woods, to forget the noise and 
dust of the big city. 

We called our cottage "Kee-am," for that is 
the Cree word which means "Never mind" — 
"Forget it" — "I should worry!" and we liked 

22 



Beach Days 

the name. It had a romantic sound, redolent of 
the old days when the Indians roamed through 
these leafy aisles of the forest, and it seemed 
more fitting and dignified than "Rough House," 
where dwelt the quietest family on the beach, 
or"Dunwurkin"or"Neverdunfillin" or"Tak- 
itezi," or any of the other more or less home- 
made names. We liked our name so well that 
we made it, out of peeled poles, in wonderful 
rustic letters, and put it up in the trees next the 
road. 

Looking back now, we wonder what we had 
to worry about! There was politics, of course; 
we had just had a campaign that warmed up our 
little province, and some of the beachites were 
not yet speaking to each other; but nobody had 
been hurt and nobody was in jail. 

Religion was not troubling us : we went duti- 
fully every Sunday to the green-and-white 
schoolhouse under the tall spruce trees, and 
heard a sermon preached by a young man from 
the college, who had a deep and intimate knowl- 
edge of Amos and Ellsha and other great men 
long dead, and sometimes we wished he would 

23 



The Next of Kin 

tell us more about the people who are living now 
and leave the dead ones alone. But it is always 
safer to speak of things that have happened 
long ago, and aspersions may be cast with Im- 
punity on Ahab and Jezebel and Balak. There 
is no danger that they will have friends on the 
front seat, who will stop their subscriptions to 
the building fund because they do not believe in 
having politics introduced Into the church. 

The congregations were small, particularly 
on the hot afternoons, for many of our people 
did not believe in gcing to church when the 
weather was not just right. Indeed, there had 
been a serious discussion in the synod of one of 
the largest churches on the question of abolish- 
ing prayers altogether in the hot weather; and 
I think that some one gave notice of a motion 
that would come up to this effect at the annual 
meeting. No; religion was not a live topic. 
There were evidently many who had said, as 
did one little girl who was leaving for her holi- 
days, "Good-bye, God — we are going to the 
country." 

One day a storm of excitement broke over us, 
24 



Beach Days 

and for a whole afternoon upset the calm of our 
existence. Four hardy woodmen came down 
the road with bright new axes, and began to cut 
down the beautiful trees which had taken so 
many years to grow and which made one of the 
greatest beauties of the beach. It was some 
minutes before the women sitting on their 
verandas realized what was happening; but no 
army ever mobilized quicker for home defense 
than they, and they came in droves demanding 
an explanation, of which there did not seem to 
be any. 

"Big Boss him say cut down tree," the spokes- 
man of the party said over and over again. 

The women in plain and simple language ex- 
pressed their unexpurga ted opinion of Big Boss, 
and demanded that he be brought to them. The 
stolid Mikes and Peters were utterly at a loss to 
know what to do! 

"Big Boss — no sense," one woman roared at 
them, hoping to supplement their scanty knowl- 
edge of English with volume of sound. 

There was no mistaking what the gestures 
meant, and at last the wood-choppers prepared 

25 



The Next of Kin 

to depart, the smallest man of the party mut- 
tering something under his breath which 
sounded like an anti-suffrage speech. I think it 
was, "Woman's place is the home," or rather 
its Bukawinian equivalent. We heard nothing 
further from them, and indeed we thought no 
more of it, for the next day was August 4, 1914. 

When the news of war came, we did not really 
believe it! War! That was over! There had 
been war, of course, but that had been long ago, 
in the dark ages, before the days of free schools 
and peace conferences and missionary conven- 
tions and labor unions ! There might be a little 
fuss in Ireland once in a while. The Irish are 
privileged, and nobody should begrudge them a 
little liberty in this. But a big war — that was 
quite impossible! Christian nations could not 
go to war ! 

"Somebody should be made to pay dear for 
this," tearfully declared a doctor's wife. "This 
is very bad for nervous women." 

The first news had come on the 9.40 train, 
and there was no more until the 6.20 train when 
the men came down from the city; but they 

«6 



Beach Days 

could throw no light on It either. The only seri- 
ous face that I saw was that of our French 
neighbor, who hurried away from the station 
without speaking to any one. When I spoke to 
him the next day, he answered me in French, 
and I knew his thoughts were far away. 

The days that followed were days of anxious 
questioning. The men brought back stories of 
the great crowds that surged through the streets 
blocking the traffic in front of the newspaper 
offices reading the bulletins, while the bands 
played patriotic airs ; of the misguided German 
who shouted, "Hoch der Kaiser!" and narrowly 
escaped the fury of the crowd. 

We held a monster meeting one night at 
"Windwhistle Cottage," and we all made 
speeches, although none of us knew what to say. 
The general tone of the speeches was to hold 
steady, — not to be panicky, — Britannia rules 
the waves, — it would all be over soon, — Dr. 
Robertson Nicholl and Kitchener could settle 
anything! 

The crowd around the dancing pavilion be- 
gan to dwindle in the evenings — that is, of the 

27 



The Next of Kin 

older people. The children still danced, happily; 
fluffy-haired little girls, with "headache" bands 
around their pretty heads, did the fox-trot and 
the one-step with boys of their own age and 
older, but the older people talked together In 
excited groups. 

Every night when the train came in the 
crowds waited in tense anxiety to get the papers, 
and when they were handed out, read them in 
silence, a silence which was ominous. Political 
news was relegated to the third page and was 
not read until we got back to the veranda. In 
these days nothing mattered; the baker came 
late; the breakfast dishes were not washed some- 
times until they were needed for lunch, for the 
German maids and the English maids discussed 
the situation out under the trees. Mary, whose 
last name sounded like a tray of dishes falling, 
the fine-looking Polish woman who brought us 
vegetables every morning, arrived late and in 
tears, for she said, "This would be bad times for 
Poland — always it was bad times for Poland, 
and I will never see my mother again." 

A shadow had fallen on us, a shadow that 
28 



Beach Days 

darkened the children's play. Now they made 
forts of sand, and bored holes in the ends 
of stove-wood to represent gaping cannon's 
mouths, and played that half the company were 
Germans; but before many days that game 
languished, for there were none who would take 
the German part: every boat that was built 
now was a battleship, and every kite was an 
aeroplane and loaded with bombs ! 

In less than a week we were collecting for a 
hospital ship to be the gift of Canadian women. 
The message was read out In church one after- 
none, and volunteer collectors were asked for. 
So successful were these collectors all over Can- 
ada that in a few days word came to us that 
enough money had been raised, and that all 
moneys collected then could be given to the 
Belgian Relief Fund. The money had simply 
poured In — It was a relief to give! 

Before the time came for school to begin, 
there were many closed cottages, for the happy 
careless freedom of the beach was gone; there Is 
no happiness In floating across a placid lake In 
a flat-bottomed boat If you find yourself con- 

29 



The Next of Kin 

tinually turning your head toward the shore, 
thinking that you hear some one shouting, 
"Extra." 

There were many things that made it hard to 
leave the place where we had spent so many 
happy hours. There was the rustic seat we had 
made ourselves, which faced the lake, and on 
which we had sat and seen the storms gather on 
Blueberry Island. It was a comfortable seat 
with the right slant in Its back, and I am still 
proud of having helped to make It. There was 
the breakwater of logs which were placed with 
such feats of strength, to prevent the erosion of 
the waves, and which withstood the big storm 
of September, 191 2, when so many breakwaters 
were smashed to kindling-wood. We always 
had intended to make a long box along the top, 
to plant red geraniums in, but It had not been 
done. There was the dressing-tent where the 
boys ran after their numerous swims, and which 
had been the scene of many noisy quarrels over 
lost garments — garters generally, for they 
have an elusive quality all their own. There 
was also the black-poplar stump which a mls- 

30 



Beach Days 

guided relative of mine said "no woman could 
split." He made this remark after I had tried in 
vain to show him what was wrong with his 
method of attack. I said that I thought he 
would do better if he could manage to hit twice 
in the same place! And he said that he would 
like to see me do it, and went on to declare that 
he would bet me a five-dollar bill that I could 
not. 

If it were not for the fatal curse of modesty I 
would tell how eagerly I grasped the axe and 
with what ease I hit, not twice, but half a dozen 
times in the same place — until the stump 
yielded. This victory was all the sweeter to me 
because it came right after our sports day when 
I had entered every available contest, from the 
nail-driving competition to the fat woman's 
race, and had never even been mentioned as 
among those present! 

We closed our cottage on August 24. That 
day all nature conspired to make us feel sorry 
that we were leaving. A gentle breeze blew 
over the lake and rasped its surface into dancing 
ripples that glittered in the sun. Blueberry 

31 



The Next of Kin 

Island seemed to stand out clear and bold and 
beckoning. White-winged boats lay over against 
the horizon and the chug-chug of a motor-boat 
came at intervals in a lull of the breeze. The 
more tender varieties of the trees had begun to 
show a trace of autumn coloring, just a hint 
and a promise of the ripened beauty of the fall 
— if we would only stay! 

Before the turn in the road hid it from sight 
we stopped and looked back at the "Kee-am 
Cottage" — my last recollection of it is of the 
boarded windows, which gave it the blinded 
look of a dead thing, and of the ferns which 
grandma had brought from the big woods be- 
yond the railway track and planted all round it, 
and which had grown so quickly and so rank 
that they seemed to fill in all the space under 
the cottage, and with their pale-green, feathery 
fringe, to be trying to lift it up into the sunshine 
above the trees. Instinctively we felt that we 
had come to the end of a very pleasant chapter 
in our life as a family; something had disturbed 
the peaceful quiet of our lives; somewhere a 
drum was beating and a fife was calling! 

32 



Beach Days 

Not a word of this was spoken, but Jack 
suddenly put it all into words, for he turned to 
me and asked quickly, "Mother, when will I be 
eighteen?" 



Cay, as the skater who blithely whirls 

To the place of the dangerous ice ! 
Content, as the lamb who nibbles the grass 

While the butcher sets the price! 
So content and gay were the boys at play 

In the nations near and far, 
When munition kings and diplomats 

Cried, ''War! War!! War!!!'' 



CHAPTER II 

WORKING IN! 

The day after we went to the city I got my 
first real glimpse of war! It was the white face 
of our French neighbor. His wife and two little 
girls had gone to France a month before the war 
broke out, and were visiting his family in a vil- 
lage on the Marne. Since the outbreak of war 
he had had no word from them, and his face 
worked pitifully when he told me this. "Not 
one word, though I cabled and got friends In 
London to wire aussi" he said. "But I will go 
myself and see." 

"What about your house and motor?*' he 
was asked. 

He raised his shoulders and flung out his 
hands. "What difference?" he said; "I will not 
need them." 

I saw him again the day he left. He came out 
of his house with a small Airedale pup which had 
been the merry playmate of Alette and Yvonne. 

35 



The Next of Kin 

He stood on the veranda holding the dog in his 
arms. Strangers were moving into the house 
and their boxes stood on the floor. I went over 
to say good-bye. 

"I will not come back," he said simply; "it 
will be a long fight; we knew it would come, but 
we did not know when. If I can but find wife 
and children — but the Germans — they are 
devils — Boches — no one knows them as we 
do!" 

He stood irresolute a moment, then handed 
me the dog and went quickly down the steps. 

"It is for France!" he said. 

I sat on the veranda railing and watched him 
go. The Airedale blinded his eyes looking after 
him, then looked at me, plainly asking for an 
explanation. But I had to tell him that I knew 
no more about it than he did. Then I tried to 
comfort him by telling him that many little dogs 
were much worse oflF than he, for they had lost 
their people and their good homes as well, and 
he still had his comfortable home and his good 
meals. But it was neither meals nor bed that 
his faithful little heart craved, and for many 

36 



Working In ! 

weeks a lonely little Airedale on Chestnut 
Street searched diligently for his merry little 
playmates and his kind master, but he found 
them not. 

There was still a certain unreality about it all. 
Sometimes it has been said that the men who 
went first went for adventure. Perhaps they 
did, but it does not matter — they have since 
proved of what sort of stuff they were made. 

When one of the first troop trains left Winni- 
peg, a handsome young giant belonging to the 
Seventy-ninth Highlanders said, as he swung 
himself up on the rear coach, "The only thing 
I am afraid of is that it will all be over before we 
get there." He was needlessly alarmed, poor 
lad! He was in time for everything; Festubert, 
Saint-Eloi, Ypres; for the gas attacks before the 
days of gas-masks, for trench-fever, for the 
D.C.M.; and now, with but one leg, and blind, 
he is one of the happy warriors at St. Dunstan's 
whose cheerfulness puts to shame those of us 
who are whole! 

There were strange scenes at the station 
when those first trains went out. The Ca- 

37 



The Next of Kin 

nadians went out with a flourish, with cheers, 
with songs, with rousing music from the bands. 
The serious men were the French and Belgian 
reservists, who, silently, carrying their bundles, 
passed through our city, with grim, determined 
faces. They knew, and our boys did not know, 
to what they were going. That is what made 
the difference in their manner. 

The government of one of the provinces, in 
the early days of the war, shut down the public 
works, and, strange to say, left the bars open. 
Their impulse was right — but they shut down 
the wrong thing; it should have been the bars, of 
course. They knew something should be shut 
down. We are not blaming them; it was a pan- 
icky time. People often, when they hear the 
honk of an automobile horn, jump back instead 
of forward. And it all came right in time. 

A moratorium was declared at once, which 
for the time being relieved people of their debts, 
for there was a strong feeling that the cup of 
sorrow was so full now that all movable trouble 
should be set off for another day! 

The temperance people then asked, as a cor- 

38 



Working In ! 

responding war measure, that the bars be closed. 
They urged that the hearts of our people were 
already so burdened that they should be re- 
lieved of the trouble and sorrow which the 
liquor traffic inevitably brings. "Perhaps," 
they said to the government, "when a happier 
season comes, we may be able to bear it better; 
but we have so many worries now, relieve us of 
this one, over which you have control." 

Then the financial side of the liquor traffic 
began to pinch. Manitoba was spending thir- 
teen million dollars over the bars every year. 
The whole Dominion's drink bill was one hun- 
dred millions. When the people began to rake 
and save to meet the patriotic needs, and to 
relieve the stress of unemployment, these great 
sums of money were thought of longingly — ■ 
and with the longing which is akin to pain! The 
problem of unemployment was aggravated by 
the liquor evil and gave another argument for 
prohibition. 

I heard a woman telling her troubles to a 
sympathetic friend one day, as we rode in an 
elevator. 

39 



The Next of Kin 

"'E's all right when 'e's in work," she said; 
"but when 'e's hidle 'e's something fierce: 'e 
knocks me about crool. 'E guzzles all the time 
'e's out of work." 

It was easy to believe. Her face matched her 
story; she was a poor, miserable, bedraggled 
creature, with teeth out in front. She wore 
black cotton gloves such as undertakers supply 
for the pallbearers, and every finger was out. 
The liquor traffic would have a better chance 
if there were not so many arguments against it 
walking round. 

About this time, too, the traffic suffered a 
great bereavement, for the personal liberty 
argument fell, mortally wounded. The war did 
that, too. 

All down the ages there have been men who 
believed that personal liberty included the right 
to do what one wished to do, no matter who was 
hurt. So, if a man wished to drink, by the 
sacred rights for which his forefathers had bled 
and died he was at liberty to do so, and then go 
home and beat up his own wife and family if he 
wanted to; for if you can't beat your own wife, 

40 



Working In I 

whom can you beat, I 'd like to know? Any one 
who disputed this sacred right was counted a 
spoil-fun and a joy-killer! 

But a change came over the world's thought 
in the early days of the war. Liberty grew to be 
a holy word, a sacred thing, when the blood of 
our brightest and best was being poured out in 
its defense, and never again will the old, selfish, 
miserable conception of liberty obtain favor. 
The Kaiser helped here, too, for he is such a 
striking example of the one who claims absolute 
liberty for himself, no matter who is hurt, that 
somehow we never hear it mentioned now. I 
believe it Is gone, forever! 

The first step In the curtailment of the liquor 
traffic was the closing of the bars at seven 
o'clock, and the beneficial eflfect was felt at once. 
Many a man got home early for the first time 
In his life, and took his whole family to the 
"movies." 

The economy meetings brought out some 
quaint speeches. No wonder! People were 
taken unawares. We were unprepared for war, 
and the changes it had brought j — we were as 

41 



The Next of Kin 

unprepared as the woman who said, In speak- 
ing of unexpected callers, "I had not even time 
to turn my plants." There was much uninten- 
tional humor. One lady, whose home was one 
of the most beautiful in the city, and who en- 
tertained lavishly, told us, in her address on 
"Economy," that at the very outbreak of the 
war she reduced her cook's wages from thirty 
to twenty dollars, and gave the difference to 
the Patriotic Fund; that she had found a 
cheaper dressmaker who made her dresses now 
for fifteen dollars, where formerly she had paid 
twenty-five; and she added artlessly, "They 
are really nicer, and I do think we should all 
give in these practical ways; that's the sort 
of giving that I really enjoy!" 

Another woman told of how much she had 
given up for the Patriotic Fund; that she had 
determined not to give one Christmas present, 
and had given up all the societies to which she 
had belonged, even the Missionary Society, and 
was giving it all to the Red Cross. " I will not 
even give a present to the boy who brings the 
paper," she declared with conviction. Whether 

4Z 



Working In I 

or not the boy's present ever reached the Red 
Cross, I do not know. But ninety-five per cent 
of the giving was real, honest, hard, sacrificing 
giving. Elevator-boys, maids, stenographers 
gave a percentage of their earnings, and gave it 
joyously. They like to give, but they do not 
like to have it taken away from them by an 
employer, who thereby gets the credit of the 
gift. The Red Cross mite-boxes into which 
children put their candy money, while not 
enriching the Red Cross to any large extent, 
trained the children to take some share in the 
responsibility; and one enthusiastic young citi- 
zen, who had been operated on for appendicitis, 
proudly exhibited his separated appendix, pre- 
served in alcohol, at so much per look, and 
presented the proceeds to the Red Cross. 

The war came home to the finest of our peo- 
ple first. It has not reached them all yet, but 
it is working in, like the frost into the cellars 
when the thermometer shows forty degrees be- 
low zero. Many a cellar can stand a week of this 
— but look out for the second ! Every day it 
comes to some one. 

43 



The Next of Kin 

"I don't see why we are always asked to 
give," one woman said gloomily, when the col- 
lector asked her for a monthly subscription to 
the Red Cross. *' Every letter that goes out of 
the house has a stamp on it — and we write a 
queer old lot of letters, and I guess we 've done 
our share." 

She is not a dull woman either or hard of 
heart. It has not got to her yet — that's all! 
I cannot be hard on her in my judgment, for it 
did not come to me all at once, either. 

When I saw the first troops going away, I 
wondered how their mothers let them go, and I 
made up my mind that I would not let my boy 
go, — I was so glad he was only seventeen, — 
for hope was strong in our hearts that it might 
be over before he was of military age. It was 
the Lusitania that brought me to see the whole 
truth. Then I saw that we were waging war on 
the very Princes of Darkness, and I knew that 
morning when I read the papers, I knew that it 
would be better — a thousand times better — 
to be dead than to live under the rule of people 
whose hearts are so utterly black and whose 

44 



Working In ! 

process of reasoning Is so oxllke — they are so 
stupidly brutal. I knew then that no man could 
die better than In defending civilization from 
this ghastly thing which threatened her! 

Soon after that I knew, without a word being 
said, that my boy wanted to go — I saw the 
seriousness come into his face, and knew what 
It meant. It was when the news from the 
Dardanelles was heavy on our hearts, and the 
newspapers spoke gravely of the outlook. 

One day he looked up quickly and said, "I 
want to go — I want to help the British Empire 
— while there Is a British Empire!" 

And then I realized that my boy, my boy, had 
suddenly become a man and had put away 
childish things forever. 

I shall always be glad that the call came to 
him, not In the Intoxication of victory, but in 
the dark hour of apparent defeat. 



CHAPTER III 

LET'S PRETEND 

Let's pretend the skies are blue, 
Let's pretend the world is new, 
And the birds of hope are singing 
All the day! 

Short of gladness — learn to fake it! 
Long on sadness — go and shake it! 
Life is only — what you make it, 
Anyway! 

There is wisdom without end 
In the game of "Let's pretend!" 

We played it to-day. We had to, for the boys 
went away, and we had to send our boys away 
with a smile! They will have heartaches and 
homesickness a-plenty, without going away 
with their memories charged with a picture of 
their mothers in tears, for that's what takes the 
heart out of a boy. They are so young, so brave, 
we felt that we must not fail them. 

With such strong words as these did we 
admonish each other, when we met the last 
night, four of us, whose sons were among the 
boys who were going away. We talked hard 

46 



Let 's Pretend 

and strong on this theme, not having a very 
good grip on It ourselves, I am afraid. We sim- 
ply harangued each other on the Idleness of 
tears at stations. Every one of us had some- 
thing to say; and when we parted, It was with 
the tacit understanding that there was an Anti- 
Tear League formed — the boys were leaving 
on an early train In the morning! 



The morning Is a dismal time anyway, and 
teeth will chatter, no matter how brave you feel ! 
It Is a squeamish, sickly, choky time, — a win- 
ter morning before the sun Is up ; and you sim- 
ply cannot eat breakfast when you look round 
the table and see every chair filled, — even the 
five-year-old fellow Is on hand, — and know 
that a long, weary time is ahead of the one who 
sits next you before he comes again to his 
father's house Even though the conversation 
Is of the gayest, every one knows what every 
one else Is thinking. 



47 



The Next of Kin 

There Is no use trying — I cannot write the 
story of that morning. ... I will tell you of 
other troop-trains I have seen go. I will tell you 
of another boy who carried off all the good-byes 
with a high hand and great spirits, and said 
something to every one of the girls who brought 
him candy, telling one that he would remember 
her In his will, promising another that he would 
marry her when he got to be Admiral of the 
Swiss Navy, but who, when he came to say 
good-bye to his father, suddenly grew very 
white and very limp, and could only say, "Oh, 
dad! Good old dad!" 

I will tell you of other troop-trains I have 
seen go out, with other boys waving to other 
women who strained their eyes and winked 
hard, hard, hard to keep back the tears, and 
stood still, quite still until the last car had dis- 
appeared around the bend, and the last whistle 
had torn the morning air Into shreds and let 
loose a whole wild chorus of echoes through the 
quiet streets! 

■ 48 ■ ■ ■ ■ 



Let 's Pretend 

There was a mist in the air this morning, and 
a white frost covered the trees with beautiful 
white crystals that softened their leafless limbs. 
It made a soft and graceful drapery on the tele- 
graph poles and wires. It carpeted the edges of 
the platform that had not been walked on, and 
even covered the black roofs of the station build- 
ings and the flatcars which stood in the yard. 
It seemed like a beautiful white decoration for 
the occasion, a beautiful, heavy, elaborate 
mourning — for those who had gone — and 
white, of course — all white, — because they 
were so young! 



Then we came home. It was near the opening 
time of the stores, and the girls were on their 
way to work, but their footfalls made no sound 
on the pavement. Even the street-cars seemed 
to glide quietly by. The city seemed grave and 
serious and sad, and disposed to go softly. . . . 
In the store windows the blinds were still down 
— ghastly, shirred white things which reminded 
me uncomfortably of the lining of a coffin ! Over 

49 



The Next of Kin 

the hotel on the corner, the Calgary Beer Man, 
growing pale In the sickly dawn, still poured — 
and lifted — and drank — and poured — and 
lifted — and drank, — Insatiable as the gods 
of war. 



I wandered Idly through the house — what a 
desolate thing a house can be when every cor- 
ner of It holds a memory! — not a memory 
either, for that bears the thought of something 
past, — when every corner of It Is full of a boy- 
ish presence! ... I can hear him rushing down 
the stairs In the morning to get the paper, and 
shouting the headlines to me as he brings It up. 
I can hear him come in at the front door and 
thump his books down on the hall seat, and call 
"Mother!" I sit down and summon them all, 
for I know they will fade soon enough — the 
thin, sharp edge of everything wears mercifully 
blunt in time! 

Then I gathered up his schoolbooks, and 
every dog-eared exercise-book, and his time- 

50 



Let 's Pretend 

table, which I found pinned on his window cur- 
tain, and I carried them up to the storeroom in 
the attic, with his baseball mitt — and then, for 
the first time, as I made a pile of the books 
under the beams, I broke my anti-tear pledge. 
It was not for myself, or for my neighbor across 
the street whose only son had gone, or for the 
other mothers who were doing the same things 
all over the world; it was not for the young sol- 
diers who had gone out that day; it was for the 
boys who had been cheated of their boyhood, 
and who had to assume men's burdens, although 
in years they were but children. The saddest 
places of all the world to-day are not the bat- 
tle fields, or the hospitals, or the cross-marked 
hillsides where the brave ones are buried; the 
saddest places are the deserted campus and 
playgrounds where they should be playing; the 
empty seats in colleges, where they should be 
sitting; the spaces in the ranks of happy, boister- 
ous schoolboys, from which the brave boys have 
gone, — these boys whose boyhood has been cut 
so pitifully short. I thought, too, of the little 
girls whose laughter will ring out no more in the 

51 



The Next of Kin 

careless, happy abandonment of girlhood, for 
the black shadow of anxiety and dread has 
fallen even on their young hearts; the tiny chil- 
dren, who, young as they are, know that some 
great sorrow has come to every one; the chil- 
dren of the war countries, with their terror- 
stricken eyes and pale faces; the unspeakable, 
unforgivable wrong that has been done to 
youth the world over. 



There, as I sat on the floor of the storeroom, 
my soul wandered down a long, dark, silent val- 
ley, and met the souls of the mothers of all 
countries, who had come there, like me, to 
mourn . . . and our tears were very hot, and 
very bitter . . . for we knew that it was the 
Valley of Lost Childhood ! 



CHAPTER IV 

PICTURES 

Nothing is lost that our memories hold, 

Nothing forgotten that once we knew; 
And to-day a boy with curls of gold 

Is running my fond heart through and through — 
In and out and round and round — 

And I find myself laughing without a sound 
At the funny things he said that time 

When life was one glad nursery rhyme. 

It should not be so hard for mothers to give 
up their children. We should grow accustomed 
to It, for we are always losing them. I once had 
a curly-haired baby with eyes like blue forget- 
me-nots, who had a sweet way of saying his 
words, and who coined many phrases which are 
still in use in my family. Who Is there who can- 
not see that "a-glng-a-wah" has amuch more 
refreshing sound than " a drink of water " ? And 
I am sure that nobody could think of a nicer 
name for the hammer and nails than a "num 
and a peedaw." At an incredibly early age this 
baby could tell you how the birdies fly and 
what the kitty says. 

53 



The Next of Kin 

All mothers who have had really wonderful 
children — and this takes us all in — will under- 
stand how hard it is to set these things down in 
cold print or even to tell them; for even our best 
friends are sometimes dull of heart and slow 
of understanding when we tell them perfectly 
wonderful things that our children did or said. 
We all know that horrible moment of suspense 
when we have told something real funny that 
our baby said, and our friends look at us with 
a dull is-that-all expression In their faces, and 
we are forced to supplement our recital by say- 
ing that it was not so much what he said as the 
way he said it! 

Soon I lost the blue-eyed baby, and there 
came in his place a sturdy little freckle-faced 
chap, with a distinct dislike for water as a 
cleansing agent, who stoutly declared that wash- 
ing his hands was a great waste of time, for 
they were sure to get dirty again; which seems 
to be reasonable, and it is a wonder that people 
have not taken this fact into account more 
when dealing with the griminess of youth. Who 
objected to going to church twice a day on the 

54 



Pictures 

ground that he "might get too fond of It." 
Who, having once received five cents as rec- 
ompense for finding his wayward sister, who 
had a certain procHvity for getting lost, after- 
wards deliberately mislaid the same sister and 
claimed the usual rates for finding her, and in 
this manner did a thriving "Lost and Found" 
business for days, until his unsuspecting parent 
overheard him giving his sister full directions 
for losing herself — he had grown tired of having 
to go with her each time, and claimed that as 
she always got half of the treat she should do 
her share of the work. Who once thrashed a 
boy who said that his sister had a dirty face, — 
which was quite true, but people do not need to 
say everything they know, do they."* Who went 
swimming In the gravel pit long before the 24th 
of May, which marks the beginning of swim- 
ming and barefoot time In all proper families, 
and would have got away with it, too, only, in 
his haste to get a ride home, he and his friend 
changed shirts by mistake, and It all came to 
light at bedtime. 
Then I lost him, too. There came in his place 



The Next of Kin 

a tall youth with a distinct fondness for fine 
clothes, stiff collars, tan boots, and bright ties; 
a dignified young man who was pained and 
shocked at the disreputable appearance of a 
younger brother who was at that time passing 
through the wash-never period of his life and 
who insisted upon claiming relationship even in 
public places. Who hung his room with flags 
and pennants and photographs. Who had for 
his friends many young fellows with high pom- 
padours, whom he called by their surnames 
and disputed with noisily and abusively, but, 
unlike the famous quarrel of Fox and Burke, 
"with no loss of friendship." Who went in his 
holidays as "mule-skinner" on a construction 
gang in the North Country, and helped to build 
the railway Into "The Crossing," and came 
home all brown and tanned, with muscles as 
hard as Iron and a luscious growth of whiskers. 
Who then went back to college and really began 
to work, for he had learned a few things about 
the value of an education as he drove the mules 
over the dump, which can be learned only when 
the muscles ache and the hands have blisters. 

56 



Pictures 

Then came the call! And again I lost him! 
But there is a private in the "Princess Pats" 
who carries my picture in his cap and who reads 
my letter over again just before "going in." 



CHAPTER V 

SAVING OUR SOULS 

work — thrice blessed of the gods — 
Abundant may you be! 

To hold us steady, when our hearts 
Grow cold and panicky! 

1 cannot fret — and drive the plough, — 
Nor weep — and ply the spade; 

O blessed work — I need you now 
To keep me unafraid! 

No terrors can invade the place 

Where honest green things thrive; 
Come blisters — backache — sunburnt face — 

And save my soul alive! 

No wonder that increased production has be- 
come a popular cry. Every one wants to work 
in a garden — a garden is so comforting and re- 
assuring. Everything else has changed, but 
seedtime and harvest still remain. Rain still 
falls, seeds sprout, buds break into leaves, and 
blossoms are replaced by fruit. 

We are forced back to the elemental things. 
Horses and cattle look better to me every day. 
Read the war news — which to-day tells of the 
destruction of French villages — and then look 

58 



Saving our Souls 

at the cattle grazing peacefully on the grass 
which clothes the hillside, and see how good they 
look ! They look like sanctified Christians to me ! 
Ever since the war I have envied them. They 
are not suspicious or jealous; they are not wor- 
ried, hurried, troubled, or afraid; they are obliv- 
ious of public opinion; they have no debts to 
pay; they do not weary you with explanations; 
they are not sorry for anything they have ever 
done; they are not blaming God for anything! 
On every count the cattle seem to have the best 
of 'us! 

It Is a quiet evening here In northern Alberta, 
and the evening light Is glinting on the frozen 
ponds. I can see far up the valley as I write, and 
one by one the lights begin to glimmer In the 
farmhouses; and I like to think that supper is 
being prepared there for hungry children. The 
thought of supper appeals to me because there 
is no dinlng-car on the train, and every minute 
I am growing hungrier. The western sky burns 
red with the sunset, and throws a sullen glow 
on the banks of clouds in the east. It is a quiet, 
peaceful evening, and I find it hard to believe 

59 



The Next of Km 

that somewhere men are killing each other and 
whole villages are burning. . . . The light on the 
ponds grows dimmer, with less of rose and more 
of a luminous gray. ... I grow hungrier still, 
and I know it is just because I cannot get any- 
thing. I eat apples and nut-bars, but they do 
not satisfy me; it is roast beef, brown gravy, 
potatoes, and turnips that I want. Is it possible 
that I refused lemon pie — last night — at 
Carmangay? Well — well — let this be a lesson 
to you ! 

The sunset Is gone now, and there is only a 
brightness in the western sky, and a big staring 
moon stands above the valley, shining down on 
the patches of snow which seem to run together 
like the wolves we used to see on the prairies of 
Manitoba long ago. The farmhouses we pass 
are bright with lights, and I know the children 
are gathered around the table to "do" their 
lessons. The North Country, with Its long, 
snowy winters, develops the love of home in the 
hearts of our people, and drives the children 
indoors to find their comfort around the fire. 
Solomon knew this when he said that the perfect 

60 



Saving our Souls 

woman "Is not afraid of the snow for her house- 
hold." Indeed, no; she knows that the snow 
Is a home-developing agency, and that no one 
knows the joy and comfort of home like those 
of us who have battled with cold and storm and 
drifted roads all day, and at nightfall come 
safely to this blessed place where warmth and 
companionship await us! Life has its compen- 
sations. 

Across the aisle from me two women are knit- 
ting — not in a neighborly, gossipy way, chat- 
ting meanwhile, but silently, swiftly, nervously. 
There is a psychological reason for women knit- 
ting just now, beyond the need of socks. I 
know how these women feel! I, even I, have 
begun to crochet! I do it for the same reason 
that the old toper in time of stress takes to his 
glass. It keeps me from thinking; it atrophies 
the brain; and now I know why the women of 
the East are so slow about getting the franchise. 
They crochet and work in wool instead of think- 
ing. You can't do both ! When the casualty lists 
are long, and letters from the Front far apart — 
I crochet. 

6i 



The Next of Kin 

Once, when I was in great pain, the doctor 
gave me chloroform, and it seemed to me that a 
great black wall arose between me and pain! 
The pain was there all right, but it could not get 
to me on account of the friendly wall which 
held it back — and I was grateful ! Now I am 
grateful to have a crochet-needle and a ball of 
silcotton. It is a sort of mental chloroform. 
This is for the real dark moments, when the 
waves go over our heads. . . . We all have them, 
but of course they do not last. 

More and more am I impressed with the won- 
derful comeback of the human soul. We are 
like those Chinese toys, which, no matter how 
they are buffeted, will come back to an upright 
position. It takes a little longer with us — that 
is all; but given half a chance — or less — peo- 
ple will rise victorious over sin and sorrow, de- 
feat and failure, and prove thereby the divinity 
which is in all of us! 

As the light dimmed outside, I had time to 
observe my two traveling companions more 
closely. Though at first sight they came under 
the same general description of "middle-aged 

62 



Saving our Souls 

women, possibly grandmothers, industriously 
knitting," there was a wide difference between 
them as I observed them further. One had a 
face which bore traces of many disappointments, 
and had now settled down into a state of sad- 
ness that was hopeless and final. She had been 
a fine-looking woman once, too, and from her 
high forehead and well-shaped mouth I should 
take her to be a woman of considerable mental 
power, but there had been too much sorrow; 
she had belonged to a house of too much trouble, 
and it had dried up the fountains of her heart, I 
could only describe her by one word, "winter- 
killed"! She was like a tree which had burst 
into bud at the coaxing of the soft spring 
zephyrs again and again, only to be caught each 
time by the frost, and at last, when spring really 
came, it could win no answering thrill, for the 
heart of the tree was "winter-killed." The frost 
had come too often ! 

The other woman was older, more wrinkled, 
more weather-beaten, but there was a childlike 
eagerness about her that greatly attracted me. 
She used her hands when she spoke, and smiled 

63 



The Next of Kin 

often. This childish enthusiasm contrasted 
strangely with her old face, and seemed like the 
spirit of youth fluttering still around the grave 
of one whom it loved ! 

I soon found myself talking to them; the old 
lady was glad to talk to me, for she was not 
making much headway with her companion, on 
whom all her arguments were beating in vain. 

"I tell her she has no call to be feeling so bad 
about the war!" she began, getting right into 
the heart of the subject; "we did n't start it! 
Let the Kings and Kaisers and Czars who make 
the trouble do the fretting. Thank God, none 
of them are any blood-relation of mine, anyway. 
I won't fret over any one's sins, only my own, 
and maybe I don't fret half enough over them, 
either!" 

"What do you know about sins.?" the other 
woman said; "you could n't sin if you tried — " 

"That's all you know about it," said the old 
lady with what was intended for a dark and 
mysterious look; "but I never could see what 
good it does to worry, anyway, and bother 
other people by feeling sorry. Now, here she is 

64 



Saving our Souls 

worrying night and day because her boy is in 
the army and will have to go to France pretty 
soon. She has two others at home, too young 
to go. Harry is still safe in England — he may 
never have to go : the war may be over — the 
Kaiser may fall and break his neck — there's 
bts of ways peace may come. Even if Harry 
does go, he may not get killed. He may only 
get his toe off, or his little finger, and come 
home, or he may escape everything. Some do. 
Even if he is killed — every one has to die, and 
no one can die a better way; and Harry is ready 
— good and ready! So why does she fret.f* I 
know she 's had trouble — lots of it — Lord, 
have n't we all ? My three boys went — two 
have been killed; but I am not complaining — 
I am still hoping the last boy may come through 
safe. Anj-'way, we couldn't help it. It is not 
our fault; we have to keep on doing what we 
can. . . . 

"I remember a hen I used to have when we 
lived on the farm, and she had more sense than 
lots of people — she was a little no-breed hen, 
and so small that nobody ever paid much atten- 

6s 



The Next of Kin 

tlon to her. But she had a big heart, and was 
the greatest mother of any hen I had, and 
stayed with her chickens until they were as big 
as she was and refused to be gathered under 
wings any longer. She never could see that they 
were grown up. One time she adopted a whole 
family that belonged to a stuck-up Plymouth 
Rock that deserted them when they were n't 
much more than feathered. Biddy stepped 
right in and raised them, with thirteen of her 
own. Hers were well grown — Biddy always 
got down to business early in the spring, she 
was so forehanded. She raised the Plymouth 
Rocks fine, too! She was a born stepmother. 
Well, she got shut out one night, and froze her 
feet, and lost some good claws, too; but I knew 
she'd manage some way, and of course I did not 
let her set, because she could not scratch with 
these stumpy feet of hers. But she found a job 
all right! She stole chickens from the other 
hens. I often wondered what she promised 
them, but she got them someway, and only 
took those that were big enough to scratch, for 
Biddy knew her limitations. She was leading 

66 



Saving our Souls 

around twenty-two chickens of different sizes 
that summer. 

"You see she had personality — that hen: 
you could n't keep her down; she never went in 
when it rained, and she could cackle louder 
than any hen on the ground; and above all, she 
took things as they came. I always admired 
her. I liked the way she died, too. Of course I 
let her live as long as she could — she would n't 
have been any good to eat, anyway, for she was 
all brains, and I never could bear to make soup 
out of a philosopher like what she was. Well, 
she was getting pretty stiff — I could see that; 
and sometimes she had to try two or three times 
before she could get on the roost. But this night 
she made it on the first try, and when I went to 
shut the door, she sat there all ruffled up. I 
reached out to feel her, she looked so humped- 
up, and the minute I touched her, she fell off the 
roost; and when I picked her up, she was dead! 
You see, she got herself balanced so she would 
stay on the roost, and then died — bluffed it 
out to the last, and died standing up! That's 
what we should all try to do!" she concluded; 

67 



The Next of Kin 

"go down with a smile — I say — hustling and 
cheerful to the last!'* 

I commended her philosophy, but the other 
woman sat silent, and her knitting lay idle on 
her knee. 

After all, the biggest thing in life is the men- 
tal attitude! 



This was the third time a hoy on a wheel 

Had come to her gate 
With the small yellow slip, with its few curt words, 

To tell her the fate 
Of the boys she had given to fight 

For the right to be free ! 
I thought I must go as a neighbor and friend 

And stand by her side ; 
At least I could tell her how sorry I was 

That a brave man had died. 

She sat in a chair when I entered the room, 

With the thing in her hand, 
And the look on her face had a light and a bloom 

I could not understand. 
Then she showed me the message and said, 

With a sigh of respite, — 
^ My last boy is dead. I can sleep. I can sleep 

Without dreaming to-night." 



CHAPTER VI 

SURPRISES 

When all the evidence is in — 

When all the good — • and all the sin — 

The Impulses — without — within 

Are catalogued — with reasons showing — 

What great surprises will await 

The small, the near-great and the great 

Who thought they Jcnew how things were going! 

Stories crowd in upon me as I write. Let no 
one ever say that this is a dull world! It is 
anything but dull! It Is a pitiful, heartbreak- 
ing world, full of injustice, misunderstandings, 
false standards, and selfishness, but it is never 
dull. Neither is it a lost world, for the darkest 
corners of it are Illuminated here and there by 
heroic deeds and noble aspirations. Men who 
hilariously sold their vote and Influence prior 
to 1914, who took every sharp turn within the 
law, and who shamelessly mocked at any Ideals 
of citizenship, were among the first to put on 
the King's uniform and march out to die. 

To-day I read in the "paper from home" that 
Private William Keel is "missing, believed 

70 



Surprises 

killed "; and it took me back to the old days be- 
fore the war when the late Private Keel was 
accustomed to hold up the little town. Mr. Keel 
was a sober man — except upon occasions. The 
occasions were not numerous, but they left an 
undying impression on his neighbors and fellow 
townsmen; for the late private had a way all his 
own. He was a big Welshman, so strong that he 
never knew how strong he was; and when he 
became obsessed with the desire to get drunk, 
no one could stop him. He had to have it out. 
At such times his one ambition was to ride a 
horse up the steps of the hotel, and then — 
George Washington-like — rise in his stirrups 
and deliver an Impassioned address on what we 
owe to the Old Flag. If he were blocked or 
thwarted In this, he became dangerous and 
hard to manage, and sometimes it took a dozen 
men to remove him to the Police Station. When 
he found himself safely landed there, with a 
locked door and small, barred window between 
himself and liberty, his mood changed and the 
remainder of the night was spent In song, mostly 
of "A life on the ocean wave and a home on the 

71 



The Next of Kin 

rolling deep"; for he had been a sailor before he 
came land-seeking to western Canada. 

After having "proved up" his land in south- 
ern Manitoba — the Wanderlust seized him and 
he went to South America, where no doubt he 
enlivened the proceedings for the natives, as he 
had for us while he lived among us. 

Six weeks after the declaration of war he came 
back — a grizzled man of forty; he had sold out 
everything, sent his wife to England, and had 
come to enlist with the local regiment. Evi- 
dently his speech about what we owe to the Old 
Flag had been a piece of real eloquence, and 
Bill himself was the proof. 

He enlisted with the boys from home as a 
private, and on the marches he towered above 
them — the tallest man in the regiment. No 
man was more obedient or trustworthy. He 
cheered and admonished the younger men, when 
long marches in the hot sun, with heavy 
accouterments, made them quarrelsome and 
full of complaints. "It's all for the Old Flag, 
boys," he told them. 

To-day I read that he is "missing, believed 



Surprises 

killed"; and I have the feeling, which I know is 
in the heart of many who read his name, that 
we did not realize the heroism of the big fellow 
in the old days of peace. It took a war to show 
us how heroic our people are. 

Not all the heroes are war-heroes either. 
The slow-grinding, searching tests of peace have 
found out some truly great ones among our 
people and have transmuted their common clay 
into pure gold. 

It is much more heartening to tell of the 
woman who went right rather than of her who 
went wrong, and for that reason I gladly set 
down here the story of one of these. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Tweed is the wife of Private 
William Tweed — small, dark-eyed, and pretty, 
with a certain childishness of face which makes 
her rouged cheeks and blackened eyebrows seem 
pathetically, innocently wicked. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Tweed, wife of Private Wil- 
liam Tweed, was giving trouble to the Patriotic 
Society. It was bad enough for her to go out 
evenings with an officer, and dance in the after- 
noon at the hotel dansant in a perfect outburst 

73 



The Next of Kin 

of gay garments ; but there was no excuse for her 
coming home in a taxi-cab, after a shopping 
expedition in broad dayHght, and to the scan- 
dal of the whole street, who watched her from 
behind lace curtains. 

The evil effects of Mrs. Tweed's actions be- 
gan to show in the falling-oif of subscriptions to 
the Patriotic Fund, and the collectors heard 
many complaints about her gay habits of life 
and her many and varied ways of squandering 
money. Mrs. Tweed became a perfect wall of 
defense for those who were not too keen on 
parting with their money. They made a moral 
issue of it, and virtuously declared, " That 
woman is not going to the devil on my money." 
"I scrimp and save and deny myself every- 
thing so I can give to the Patriotic Fund, and 
look at her!" women cried. 

It was in vain that the collectors urged that 
she was only getting five dollars a month, any- 
way, from the Patriotic Fund, and that would 
not carry her far on the road to destruction or 
in any other direction. When something which 
appears to set aside the obligation to perform a 

74 



Surprises 

disagreeable duty comes In view, the hands of 
the soul naturally clamp on it. 

Mrs. Tweed knew that she was the bad exam- 
ple, and gloried In It. She banged the front door 
when she entered the block late at night, and 
came up the stairs gayly singing, "Where did 
Robinson Crusoe go with Friday on Saturday 
night?" while her sleepy neighbors anathema- 
tized all dependents of the Patriotic Fund. 

The Red Cross ladles discussed the matter 
among themselves and decided that some one 
should put the matter before Mrs. Tweed and 
tell her how hard she was making It for the 
other dependents of soldiers. The president 
was selected for the task, which did not at first 
sight look like a pleasant one, but Mrs. Kent 
had done harder things than this, and she set 
out bravely to call on the wa3^ward lady. 

The D.O.E. visltor'who called on all the sol- 
diers' wives In that block had reported that 
Mrs. Tweed had actually put her out, and told 
her to go to a region which is never mentioned 
in polite society except in theological discus- 
sions. 

75 



The Next of Kin 

"I know," Mrs. Tweed said, when the Red 
Cross President came to see her, "what you 
are coming for, and I don't blame you — I sure 
have been fierce, but you don't know what a 
good time I 've had. Gee, it's great! I've had 
one grand tear! — one blow-out! And now I am 
almost ready to be good. Sit down, and I'll tell 
you about it; you have more give to you than 
that old hatchet-face that came first; I would 
n't tell her a thing! 

"I am twenty-five years old, and I never 
before got a chance to do as I liked. When I 
was a kid, I had to do as I was told. My mother 
brought me up In the fear of the Lord and the 
fear of the neighbors. I whistled once in church 
and was sent to bed every afternoon for a week 
— I did n't care, though, I got in my whistle. I 
never wanted to do anything bad, but I wanted 
to do as I liked — and I never got a chance. 
Then I got married. William is a lot older than 
I am, and he controlled me — always — made 
me economize, scrimp, and save. I really did 
not want to blow money, but they never gave 
me a chance to be sensible. Every one put me 

76 



Surprises 

down for a *nut.' My mother called me 
' Trixie.' No girl can do well on a name like 
that. Teachers passed me from hand to hand 
saying, 'Trixie is such a mischief!' I had a repu- 
tation to sustain. 

"Then mother and father married me off to 
Mr. Tweed because he was so sensible, and I 
needed a firm hand, they said. I began every- 
thing in life with a handicap. Name and 
appearance have always been against me. No 
one can look sensible with a nose that turns 
straight up, and I will have bright colors to 
wear — I was brought up on wincey, color of 
mud, and all these London-smoke, battleship- 
gray colors make me sick. I want reds and blues 
and greens, and I am gradually working into 
them." 

She held out a dainty foot as she spoke, ex- 
hibiting a bright-green stocking striped In gold. 

"But mind you, for all I am so frivolous, I 
am not a fool exactly. All I ask is to have my 
fling, and I've had it now for three whole 
months. When William was at home I never 
could sit up and read one minute, and so the 

77 



The Next of Kin 

first night he was away I burned the Hght all 
night just to feel wicked! It was great to be 
able to let it burn. I 've gone to bed early every 
night for a week to make up for it. What do 
you tliink of that? It is just born in me, and I 
can't help it. If William had stayed at home, 
this would never have showed out in me. I 
would have gone on respectable and steady. 
But this is one of the prices we pay for bringing 
up women to be men's chattels, with some one 
always placed in authority over them. When 
the authority is removed, there's the devil to 
pay!" 

The President of the Red Cross looked at her 
in surprise. She had never thought of it this 
way before; women were made to be protected 
and shielded; she had said so scores of times; 
the church had taught it and sanctioned it. 

"The whole system is wrong," Mrs. Tweed 
continued, "and nice women like you, working 
away In churches ruled by men, have been to 
blame. You say women should be protected, 
and you cannot make good the protection. 
What protection have the soldiers' wives now? 

78 



Surprises 

Evil tongues, prying eyes, on the part of women, 
and worse than that from the men. The church 
has fallen down on its job, and is n't straight 
enough to admit it! We should either train our 
women to take their own part and run their 
own affairs, or else we should train the men 
really to honor and protect women. The church 
has done neither. Bah! I could make a better 
world with one hand tied behind my back!" 

"But, Mrs. Tweed," said the president, "this 
war is new to all of us — how did we know what 
was coming.'* It has taken all of us by surprise, 
and we have to do our bit in meeting the new 
conditions. Your man was never a fighting man 
— he hates it; but he has gone and will fight, 
although he loathes it. I never did a day's work 
outside of my home until now, and now I go to 
the office every day and try to straighten out 
tangles ; women come in there and accuse me of 
everything, down to taking the bread out of 
their children's mouths. Two of them who 
brought in socks the other day said, *Do you 
suppose the soldiers ever see them?' I did all 
I could to convince them that we were quite 

79 



The Next of Kin 

honest, though I assure you I felt like telling 
them what I thought of them. But things are 
abnormal now, everything Is out of sorts; and 
if we love our country we will try to remedy 
things instead of making them worse. When I 
went to school we were governed by what they 
called the * honor system.' It was a system of 
self-government; we were not watched and 
punished and bound by rules, but graded and 
ruled ourselves — and the strange thing about 
It was that It worked ! When the teacher went 
out of the room, everything went on just the 
same. Nobody left her desk or talked or Idled ; 
we just worked on, minding our own affairs ; it 
was a great system." 

Mrs. Tweed looked at her with a cynical 
smile. "Some system!" she cried mockingly; 
" it may work In a school, where the little pin- 
afore, pig-tail Minnies and Lucys gather; It 
won't work in life, where every one is grabbing 
for what he wants, and getting it some way. 
But sec here," she cried suddenly, "you have n't 
called me down yet! or told me I am a disgrace 
to the Patriotic Fund! or asked me what will 

80 



Surprises 

my husband say when he comes home! You 
have n't looked shocked at one thing I 've told 
you. Say, you should have seen old hatchet- 
face when I told her that I hoped the war would 
last forever! She said I was a wicked woman!" 

"Well — were n't you?" asked the president. 

"Sure I was — if I meant it — but I did n't. 
I wanted to see her jump, and she certainly 
jumped; and she soon gave me up and went 
back and reported. Then you were sent, and I 
guess you are about ready to give in." 

"Indeed, I am not," said the president, smil- 
ing. "You are not a fool — I can see that — 
and you can think out these things for yourself. 
You are not accountable to me, anyway. I have 
no authority to find fault with you. If you 
think your part in this terrible time Is to go the 
limit In fancy clothes, theaters, and late suppers 
with men of questionable character — that is 
for you to decide. I believe in the honor system. 
You are certainly setting a bad example — but 
you have that privilege. You cannot be sent to 
jail for it. The money you draw is hard-earned 
money — it Is certainly sweated labor which 

8i 



The Next of Kin 

our gallant men perform for the miserable little 
sum that is paid them. It is yours to do with 
as you like. I had hoped that more of you 
young women would have come to help us in 
our work in the Red Cross and other places. 
We need your youth, your enthusiasm, your 
prettiness, for we are sorely pressed with many 
cares and troubles, and we seem to be old some- 
times. But you are quite right in saying that 
it is your own business how you spend the 
money!" 

After Mrs. Kent had gone, the younger 
woman sat looking around her flat with a queer 
feeling of discontent. A half-eaten box of choco- 
lates was on the table and a new silk sweater 
coat lay across the lounge. In the tiny kitchen- 
ette a tap dripped with weary insistence, and 
unwashed dishes filled the sink. She got up sud- 
denly and began to wash the dishes, and did not 
stop until every corner of her apartment was 
clean and tidy. 

"I am getting dippy," she said as she looked 
at herself in the mirror in the buffet; "I've 
got to get out — this quiet life gets me. I'll go 

82 



Surprises 

down to the dansant this afternoon — no use 
— I can't stand being alone." 

She put on her white suit, and dabbing rouge 
on her cheeks and pencIHng her eyes, she went 
forth into the sunshiny streets. 

She stopped to look at a display of sport suits 
in a window, also to see her own reflection in a 
mirror placed for the purpose among the suits. 

Suddenly a voice sounded at her elbow: 
"Some kid, eh.f* Looking good enough to eat!" 

She turned around and met the admiring 
gaze of Sergeant Edward Loftus Brown, re- 
cruiting sergeant of the 19-th, with whom she 
had been to the theater a few nights before. She 
welcomed him effusively. 

"Come on and have something to eat," he 
said. "I got three recruits to-day — so I am 
going to proclaim a half-holiday." 

They sat at a table in an alcove and gayly 
discussed the people who passed by. The Presi- 
dent of the Red Cross came in, and at a table 
across the room hastily drank a cup of tea and 
went out again. 

"She came to see me to-day," said Mrs. 

83 



The Next of Kin 

Tweed, "and gave me to understand that they 
were not any too well pleased with me — I am 
too gay for a soldier's wife! And they do not 
approve of you." 

Sergeant Brown smiled indulgently and 
looked at her admiringly through his oyster- 
lidded eyes. His smile was as complacent as 
that of the ward boss who knows that the 
ballot-box is stuifed. It was the smile of one 
who can afford to be generous to an enemy. 

"Women are always hard on each other," he 
said soothingly; "these women do not under- 
stand you, Trixie, that's all. No person un- 
derstands you but me." His voice was of the 
magnolia oil quality. 

"Oh, rats ! " she broke out. " Cut that under- 
standing business ! She understands me all right 
— she knows me for a mean little selfish slacker 
who is going to have a good time no matter what 
it costs. I have been like a bad kid that eats the 
jam when the house is burning! But remember 
this, I 'm no fool, and I 'm not going to kid my- 
self into thinking it is anything to be proud of, 
for it is n't." 

84 



Surprises 

Sergeant Brown sat up straight and regarded 
her critically. "What have you done," he said, 
"that she should call you down for it? You're 
young and pretty and these old hens are jealous 
of you. They can't raise a good time them- 
selves and they're sore on you because all the 
men are crazy about you." 

"Gee, you're mean," Mrs. Tweed retorted, 
" to talk that way about women who are giving 
up everything for their country. Mrs. Kent's 
two boys are in the trenches, actually lighting, 
not just parading round in uniform like you. 
She goes every day and works in the office of 
the Red Cross and tries to keep every tangle 
straightened out. She's not jealous of me — 
she despises me for a little feather-brained pin- 
head. She thinks I am even worse than I am. 
She thinks I am as bad as you would like me to 
be! Naturally enough, she judges me by my 
company." 

Sergeant Brown's face flushed dull red, but 
she went on: "That woman is all right — take 
it from me." 

"Well, don't get sore on me," he said quickly; 
85 



The Next of Kin 

"I'm not the one who is turning you down. 
I 've always stuck up for you and you know it!" 

"Why shouldn't you?" she cried. "You 
know well that I am straight, even if I am a 
fool. These women are out of patience with me 
and my class — " 

"Men are always more charitable to women 
than women are to each other, anyway — 
women are cats, mostly!" he said, as he rolled a 
cigarette. 

"There you go again!" she cried, — "pre- 
tending that you know. I tell you women are 
women's best friends. What help have you 
given to me to run straight, for all your hot air 
about thinking so much of mef You've stuck 
around my flat until I had to put you out — 
you 've never sheltered or protected me in any 
way. Men are broad-minded toward women's 
characters because they do not care whether 
women are good or not — they would rather 
that they were not. I do not mean all men, — 
William was different, and there are plenty like 
him — but I mean men like you'who run around 
with soldiers' wives and slam the women who 

86 



Surprises 

are our friends, and who are really concerned 
about us. You are twenty years older than I 
am. You're always blowing about how much 
you know about women — also the world. Why 
did n't you advise me not to make a fool of 

myself.'"' 

Sergeant Brown leaned over and patted her 
hand. "There now, Trixie," he said, "don't 
get excited; you're the best girl in town, only 
you 're too high-strung. Have n't I always stood 
by you .? Did I ever turn you down, even when 
these high-brow ladies gave you the glassy eye? 
Why are you going back on a friend now.? You 
had lots to say about the Daughter of the 
Empire who came to see you the last time." 

"She was n't nice to me," said Mrs. Tweed;' 
" but she meant well, anyway. But I 'm getting 
ashamed of myself now — for I see I am not 
playing the game. Things have gone wrong 
through no fault of ours. The whole world has 
gone wrong, and it's up to us to bring it right if 
we can. These women are doing their share — 
they've given up everything. But what have I 
done? I let William go, of course, and that's a 

87 



The Next of Kin 

lot, for I do think a lot of William; but I am not 
doing my own share. Running around to the 
stores, eating late suppers, saying snippy things 
about other women, and giving people an ex- 
cuse for not giving to the Patriotic Fund. You 
and I sitting here to-day, eating expensive 
things, are not helping to win the war, I can tell 
you." 

"But my dear girl," he Interrupted, "whose 
business Is It.'* and what has happened to you 
anyway.'' I did n't bring you here to tell me my 
patriotic duty. I like you because you amuse 
me with your smart speeches. I don't want to 
be lectured — and I won't have it." 

Mrs. Tweed arose and began to put on her 
gloves. "Here's where we part," she said; "I 
am going to begin to do my part, just as I see It. 
I 've signed on — I 've joined the great Win- 
the-War-Party. You should try it. Sergeant 
Brown. We have no exact rules to go by — we 
are self-governed. It Is called the honor system; 
each one rules himself. It's quite new to me, 
but I expect to know more about It." 

"Sit down!" he said sternly; "people are 
88 



Surprises 

looking at you — they think we are quarreling; 
I am not done yet, and neither are you. Sit 
down!" 

She sat down and apologized. "I am excited, 
I believe," she said; "people generally are when 
they enlist; and although I stood up, I had no 
intention of going, for the bill has not come yet 
and I won't go without settling my share of it." 

"Forget it!" he said warmly; "this is n't a 
Dutch treat. What have I done that you should 
hit me a slam like this.^" 

"It is n't a slam," she said; "it is quite differ- 
ent. I want to run straight and fair — and I 
can't do it and let you pay for my meals ; there 's 
no sense in women being sponges. I know we 
have been brought up to beat our way. 'Be 
pretty, and all things will be added unto you,* 
is the first commandment, and the one with the 
promise. I 've laid hold on that all my life, but 
to-day I am giving it up. The old way of train- 
ing women nearly got me, but not quite — and 
now I am making a new start. It is n't too late. 
The old way of women always being under an 
obligation to men has started us wrong. I'm 

89 



The Next of Kin 

not blaming you or any one, but I 'm done with 
it. If you see things as I do, you '11 be willing to 
let me pay. Don't pauperize me any more and 
make me feel mean." 

"Oh, go as far as you like!" he said petu- 
lantly. "Pay for me, too, if you like — don't 
leave me a shred of self-respect. This all comes 
of giving women the vote. I saw it coming, but 
I could n't help it! I like the old-fashioned 
women best — but don't mind me!" 

"I won't," she said; "nothing is the same as 
it was. How can anything go on the same.^* We 
have to change to meet new conditions and I 'm 
starting to-day. I 'm going to give up my suite 
and get a job — anything — maybe dishwash- 
ing. I 'm going to do what I can to bring things 
right. If every one will do that, the country is 
safe." 

In a certain restaurant there is a little wait- 
ress with clustering black hair and saucy little 
turned-up nose. She moves quickly, deftly, 
decidedly, and always knows what to do. She is 
young, pretty, and bright, and many a man has 

90 



Surprises 

made up his mind to speak to her and ask her 
to "go out and see a show"; but after ex- 
changing a few remarks with her, he changes 
his mind. Something tells him it would not go! 
She carries trays of dishes from eight-thirty to 
six every day except Sunday. She has respect- 
fully refused to take her allowance from the 
Patriotic Fund, explaining that she has a job. 
The separation allowance sent to her from the 
Militia Department at Ottawa goes directly 
Into the bank, and she is able to add to It some- 
times from her wages. 

The people In the block where Mrs. Tweed 
lived will tell you that she suddenly gave up 
her suite and moved away and they do not 
know where she went, but they are very much 
afraid she was going "wrong." What a lot of 
pleasant surprises there will be for people when 
they get to heaven! 



CHAPTER VII 

CONSERVATION 

There are certain words which have come 
into general circulation since the war. One of 
the very best of these Is " Conservation." 

Conservation Is a fine, rich-sounding, round 
word, agreeable to the ear and eye, and much 
more aristocratic than the word "Reform," 
which seems to carry with it the unpleasant 
suggestion of something that needs to be 
changed. The dictionary, which knows every- 
thing, says that "Conservation means the 
saving from destructive change the good we 
already possess," which seems to be a perfectly 
worthy ambition for any one to entertain. 

For many people, changes have In them an 
element of wickedness and danger. I once knew 
a little girl who wore a sunbonnet all summer 
and a hood all winter, and cried one whole day 
each spring and fall when she had to make the 
change; for changes to her were fearsome things. 

92 



Conservation 

This antagonism to change has delayed the 
progress of the world and kept back many a 
needed reform, for people have grown to think 
that whatever is must be right, and indeed have 
made a virtue of this belief. 

"It was good enough for my father and it is 
good enough for me," cries many a good tory 
(small tj please), thinking that by this utter- 
ance he convinces an admiring world that all 
his folks have been exceedingly fine people for 
generations. 

But changes are inevitable. What is true to- 
day may not be true to-morrow. All our opin- 
ions should be marked, "Subject to change 
without notice." We cannot all indulge our- 
selves in the complacency of the maiden lady 
who gave her age year after year as twenty- 
seven, because she said she was not one of these 
flighty things who say "one thing to-day and 
something else to-morrow." 

Life is change. Only dead things remain as 
they are. Every living thing feels the winds of 
the world blowing over it, beating and buffeting 
it, marking and bleaching it. Change is a char- 

93 



The Next of Kin 

acterlstic of life, and we must reckon on it! 
Progress is Life's first law! In order to be as 
good as we were yesterday, we have to be bet- 
ter. Life is built on a sliding scale; we have to 
keep moving to keep up. There are no rest sta- 
tions on Life's long road ! 

The principle of conservation is not at enmity 
with the spirit of change. It is in thorough har- 
mony with it. 

Conservation becomes a timely topic in these 
days of hideous waste. In fact it will not much 
longer remain among the optional subjects in 
Life's curriculum. Even now the Moving Fin- 
ger, invisible yet to the thoughtless, is writing 
after it the stern word "Compulsory." Four 
hundred thousand men have been taken away 
from the ranks of producers here in Canada, 
and have gone into the ranks of destroyers, be- 
coming a drain upon our resources for all that 
they eat, wear, and use. Many thousand other 
men are making munitions, whose end is de- 
struction and waste. We spend more in a day 
now to kill and hurt our fellow men than we 
ever spent in a month to educate or help them. 

94 



Conservation 

Great new ways of wasting and destroying our 
resources are going on while the old leaks are all 
running wide open. More children under five 
years old have died since the war than there 
have been men killed in battle! — and largely 
from preventable " dirt-diseases " and poverty. 
Rats, weeds, extravagance, general shiftlessness 
are still doing business at the old stand, un- 
molested. 

But it is working in on us that something 
must be done. Now is the time to set in force 
certain agencies to make good these losses in so 
far as they can be repaired. Now is the time, 
when the excitement of the war is still on us, 
when the frenzy is still in our blood, for the 
time of reaction is surely to be reckoned with 
by and by. Now we are sustained by the blare 
of the bands and the flourish of flags, but in the 
cold, gray dawn of the morning after, we shall 
count our dead with disillusioned eyes and won- 
der what was the use of all this bloodshed and 
waste. Trade conditions are largely a matter of 
the condition of the spirit, and ours will be 
drooping and drab when the tumult and the 

95 



The Next of Kin 

shouting have died and the reign of reason has 
come back. 

Personal thrift comes naturally to our minds 
when we begin to think of the lessons that we 
should take to heart. Up to the time of the war 
and since, we have been a prodigal people, 
confusing extravagance with generosity, thrift 
with meanness. The Indians in the old days 
killed off the buffalo for the sport of killing, 
and left the carcases to rot, never thinking of 
a time of want; and so, too, the natives in the 
North Country kill the caribou for the sake 
of their tongues, which are considered a real 
"company dish," letting the remainder of the 
animal go to waste. 

This is a startling thought, and comes to one 
over and over again. You will think of it when 
you order your twenty-five cents' worth of 
cooked ham and see what you get! You will 
think of it again when you come home and find 
that the butcher delivered your twenty-five 
cents' worth of cooked ham in your absence, 
and, finding the door locked, passed it through 
the keyhole. And yet the prodigality of the 

96 



Conservation 

Indian and the caribou-killer are infantile com- 
pared with the big extravagances that go on 
without much comment. Economy is a broad 
term used to express the many ways in which 
other people might save money. Members of 
Parliament have been known to tell many ways 
in which women might economize; their tender 
hearts are cut to the quick as they notice the 
fancy footwear and expensive millinery worn 
by women. Great economy meetings have been 
held in London, to which the Cabinet Ministers 
rode in expensive cars, and where they drank 
champagne, enjoining women to abjure the use 
of veils and part with their pet dogs as a war 
measure; but they said not a word about the 
continuance of the liquor business which rears 
its head in every street and has wasted three 
million tons of grain since the war began. What 
wonder is it that these childish appeals to the 
women to economize fall on deaf or indignant 
ears ! Women have a nasty way of making com- 
parisons. They were so much easier to manage 
before they learned to read and write. 
The war wears on its weary course. The high 
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The Next of Kin 

cost of living becomes more and more of a night- 
mare to the people, yet the British Government 
tolerates a system which wastes more sugar than 
would feed the army, impairs the efficiency of 
the working-man one sixth, and wastes two 
million dollars every day in what is at best a, 
questionable indulgence, and at worst a na- 
tional menace. Speaking of economy, personal 
thrift, conservation, and other "win-the-war" 
plans, how would the elimination of the liquor 
traffic do for a start? 

There are two ways of practicing economy: 
one is by refusing to spend money, which is not 
always a virtue; and the other is by increasing 
production, which is the greatest need of this 
critical time. The farmers are doing all they 
can: they are producing as much as they have 
means and labor for. But still in Canada much 
land is idle, and many people sit around won- 
dering what they can do. There will be women 
sitting on verandas in the cities and towns in 
the summer, knitting socks, or maybe crochet- 
ing edges on handkerchiefs, who would gladly be 
raising potatoes and chickens if they knew how 

98 



Conservation 

to begin ; and a corresponding number of chick- 
ens and potatoes will go unraised. But the idea 
of cooperation is taking root, and here and there 
there is a breaking away from the conventional 
mode of life. The best thing about it is that 
people are thinking, and pretty soon the im- 
pact of public opinion will be so strong that 
there will be a national movement to bring 
together the idle people and the idle land. We 
are paying a high price for our tuition, but we 
must admit that the war is a great teacher. 

There is a growing sentiment against the 
holding-up of tracts of land by speculators wait- 
ing for the increase in value which comes by the 
hard work of settlers. Every sod turned by the 
real, honest settler, who comes to make his 
home, increases the value of the section of land 
next him, probably held by a railway company, 
and the increase makes it harder for some other 
settler to buy it. By his industry the settler 
makes money for the railway company, but in- 
cidentally makes his own chance of acquiring 
a neighbor more remote! 

The wild-lands tax which prevails in the 
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The Next of Kin 

western provinces of the Dominion, and which 
we hope will be increased, will make it un- 
profitable to hold land idle, and will do much, 
if made heavy enough, to liberate land for 
settlement. 

As it is now, people who have no money to 
buy land have to go long distances from the 
railroad to get homesteads, and there suffer all 
the inconveniences and hardships and dangers 
of pioneer life, miles from neighbors, many miles 
from a doctor, and without school or church; 
while great tracts of splendid land lie Idle and 
unimproved, close beside the little towns, held 
in the tight clasp of a hypothetical owner far 
away. 

Western Canada has a land problem which 
war conditions have intensified. But people are 
beginning to talk of these things, and the next 
few years will see radical changes. 

The coming of women into the political world 
should help. Women are born conservationists. 
Their first game is housekeeping and doll- 
mending. The doll, by preference, is a sick doll, 
and in need of care. Their work is to care for, 

lOO 



Conservation 

work for something, and If the advent of 
women into poHtics does not mean that hfe is 
made easier and safer for other women and for 
children, then we will have to confess with 
shame and sorrow that politically we have 
failed ! But we are not going to fail ! Already 
the angel has come down and has troubled the 
water. Discussions are raging in women's soci- 
eties and wherever women meet together, and 
out of it something will come. Men are always 
quite willing to be guided by women when their 
schemes are sound and sane. 

In New Zealand the first political activity 
of women was directed toward lowering the 
death-rate among children, by sending out 
trained nurses to care for them and give Instruc- 
tion to the mothers. Ours will follow the same 
line, because the heart of woman Is the same 
everywhere. Dreams will soon begin to come 
true. Good dreams always do — in time; and 
why not.f* There is nothing too good to be true! 
Here is one that Is coming! 

Little Mary Wood set out bravely to do the 
chores; for it was Christmas Eve, and even in 

lOI 



The Next of Kin 

the remoteness of the Abilene Valley, some of 
the old-time festivity of Christmas was felt. 
Mary's mother had had good times at Christ- 
mas when she was a little girl, and Mary's Imag- 
ination did the rest. Mary started out singing. 

It was a mean wind that came through the 
valley that night; a wind that took no notice 
of Christmas, or Sunday, or even of the brave 
little girl doing the chores, so that her father 
might not have them to do when he came home. 
It was so mean that It would not even go round 
Mary Wood, aged eleven, and small for her age 
— It went straight through her and chattered 
her teeth and blued her hands, and would 
have frozen her nose if she had not at intervals 
put her little hand over It. 

But In spite of the wind, the chores were done 
at last, and Mary came back to the house. 
Mary's mother was always waiting to open the 
door and shut it quick again, but to-night, when 
Mary reached the door she had to open it her- 
self, for her mother had gone to bed. 

Mary was surprised at this, and hastened to 
the bedroom to see what was wrong. 

I02 



Conservation 

Mary's mother replied to her questions quite 
cheerfully. She was not sick. She was only 
tired. She would be all right in the morning. 
But Mary Wood, aged eleven, had grown wise 
in her short years, and she knew there was 
something wrong. Never mind ; she would ask 
father. He always knew everything and what 
to do about it. 

Going back to the kitchen she saw the writ- 
ing-pad on which her mother had been writing. 
Her mother did not often write letters; certainly 
did not often tear them up after writing them; 
and here in the home-made waste-paper basket 
was a torn and crumpled sheet. Mary did not 
know that it was not the square thing to read 
other people's letters, and, besides, she wanted 
to know. She spread the letter on the table and 
pieced it together. Laboriously she spelled it 
out: — 

"I don't know why I am so frightened this 
time, Lizzie, but I am black afraid. I suppose 
it is because I lost the other two. I hate this 
lonely, God-forsaken country. I am afraid of 
it to-night — it's so big and white and far 

103 



The Next of Kin 

away, and It seems as if nobody cares. Mary 
does not know, and I cannot tell her; but I 
know I should, for she may be left with the care 
of Bobbie. To-night I am glad the other two 
are safe. It is just awful to be a woman, Lizzie; 
women get It going and coming, and the worst 
of it Is, no one cares!" 

Mary read the letter over and over, before 
she grasped Its meaning. Then the terrible 
truth rolled over her, and her heart seemed to 
stop beating. Mary had not lived her eleven 
years without finding out some of the grim facts 
of life. She knew that the angels brought babies 
at very awkward times, and to places where 
they were not wanted a bit, and she also knew 
that sometimes, when they brought a baby, 
they had been known to take the mother away. 
Mary had her own opinion of the angels who did 
that, but It had been done. There was only one 
hope: her father always knew what to do. 

She thawed a hole in the frosted window and 
tried to see down the trail, but the moon was 
foggy and It was impossible to see more than a 
few yards. 

104 



Conservation 

Filled with a sense of fear and dread, she 
built up a good fire and filled the kettle with 
water; she vigorously swept the floor and tidied 
the few books on their home-made shelf. 

It was ten o'clock when her father came in, 
pale and worried. Mary saw that he knew, too. 

He went past her into the bedroom and 
spoke hurriedly to his wife; but Mary did not 
hear what they said. 

Suddenly she heard her mother cry and In- 
stinctively she ran into the room. 

Her father stood beside the bed holding his 
head, as if in pain. Mary's mother had turned 
her face Into the pillow, and cried; and even 
little Bobbie, who had been awakened by the 
unusual commotion, sat up, rubbing his eyes, 
and cried softly to himself. 

Mary's father explained It to Mary. 

"Mrs. Roberts has gone away," he said. "I 
went over to see her to-day. We were depending 
on her to come over and take care of your 
mother — for a while — and now she has gone, 
and there Is not another woman between here 
and the Landing." 

105 



The Next of Kin 

"It's no use trying, Robert," Mrs. Wood 
said between her sobs; "I can't stay — I am so 
frightened. I am beginning to see things — 
and I know what it means. There are black 
things in every corner — trying to tell me some- 
thing, grinning, jabbering things — that are 
waiting for me; I see them ever)Awhere I look." 

Mr. Wood sat down beside her, and patted 
her hand. 

"I know, dear," he said; "it's hell, this lonely 
life. It's too much for any woman, and I '11 give 
it all up. Better to live on two meals a day in a 
city than face things like this. We wanted a 
home of our own, Millie, — you remember how 
we used to talk, — and we thought we had 
found it here — good land and a running 
stream. We have worked hard and it is just 
beginning to pay, but we'll have to quit — and 
I '11 have to work for some one else all my life. 
It was too good to be true, Millie." 

He spoke without any bitterness in his voice, 
just a settled sadness, and a great disappoint- 
ment. 

Suddenly the old dog began to bark with 
io6 



Conservation 

strong conviction in every bark, which indi- 
cated that he had really found something at 
last that was worth mentioning. There was a 
sudden jangle of sleighbells in the yard, and 
Mary's father went hastily to the door and 
called to the dog to be quiet. A woman walked 
into the square of light thrown on the snow 
from the open door, and asked if this was the 
place where a nurse was needed. 

Mr. Wood reached out and took her big 
valise and brought her into the house, too 
astonished to speak. He was afraid she might 
vanish. 

She threw off her heavy coat before she spoke, 
and then, as she wiped the frost from her eye- 
brows, she explained : — 

"I am what is called a pioneer nurse, and I 
am sent to take care of your wife, as long as she 
needs me. You see the women in Alberta have 
the vote now, and they have a little more to say 
about things than they used to have, and one 
of the things they are keen on is to help pioneer 
women over their rough places. Your neighbor, 
Mrs. Roberts, on her way East, reported your 

107 



The Next of Kin 

wife's case, and so I am here. The Mounted 
Police brought me out, and I have everything 
that is needed." 

"But I don't understand!" Mr. Wood 
began. 

"No!" said the nurse; "it is a httle queer, 
is n't it.^ People have spent money on pigs and 
cattle and horses, and have bonused railways 
and elevator companies, or anything that 
seemed to help the country, while the people 
who were doing the most for the country, the 
settlers' wives, were left to live or die as seemed 
best to them. Woman's most sacred function is 
to bring children into the world, and if all goes 
well, why, God bless her! — but when things 
go wrong — God help her! No one else was 
concerned at all. But, as I told you, women 
vote now in Alberta, and what they say goes. 
Men are always ready to help women in any 
good cause, but, naturally enough, they don't 
see the tragedy of the lonely woman, as women 
see It. They are just as sympathetic, but they 
do not know what to do. Some time ago, before 
the war, there was an agitation to build a mon- 

io8 



Conservation 

ument to the pioneer women, a great affair of 
marble and stone. The women did not warm up 
to it at all. They pointed out that It was poor 
policy to build monuments to brave women 
who had died, while other equally brave women 
in similar circumstances were being let die! So 
they sort of frowned down the marble monu- 
ment idea, and began to talk of nurses instead. 

"So here I am," concluded Mrs. Sanderson, 
as she hung up her coat and cap. " I am a monu- 
ment to those who are gone, and the free gift 
of the people of Alberta to you and your wife, 
in slight appreciation of the work you are doing 
in settling the country and making all the land 
in this district more valuable. They are a little 
late in acknowledging what they owe the set- 
tler, but it took the women a few years to get 
the vote, and then a little while longer to get the 
woman's point of view before the public." 

Mary Wood stood at her father's side while 
the nurse spoke, drinking in every word. 

"But who pays?" asked Mary's father — 
"who pays for this.'"' 

"It is all simple enough," said the nurse. 
109 



The Next of Kin 

"There are many millions of acres in Alberta 
held by companies, and by private owners, who 
live in New York, London, and other places, 
who hold this land idle, waiting for the prices 
to go up. The prices advance with the coming- 
in of settlers like yourself, and these owners get 
the benefit. The Government thinks these land- 
owners should be made to pay something to- 
ward helping the settlers, so they have put on a 
wild-lands tax of one per cent of the value of the 
land; they have also put a telephone tax on each 
unoccupied section, which will make It as easy 
for you to get a telephone as if every section was 
settled; and they have also a hospital tax, and 
will put up a hospital next year, where free 
treatment will be given to every one who be- 
longs to the municipality. 

"The Idea Is to tax the wild land so heavily 
that It will not be profitable for speculators to 
hold It, and It will be released for real, sure- 
enough settlers. The Government holds to the 
view that It Is better to make homes for 
many people than to make fortunes for a few 
people." 

no 



Conservation 

Mary's father sat down with a great sigh that 
seemed half a laugh and half a sob. 

"What is it you said the women have now?" 
asked Mary. 

The nurse explained carefully to her small but 
interested audience. When she was done, Mary 
Wood, aged eleven, had chosen her life-work. 

"Now I know what I '11 be when I grow big," 
she said; "I intended to be a missionary, but 
I 've changed my mind — I am going to be a 
Voter!" 



CHAPTER VIII 

"PERMISSION" 

He walked among us many years, 
And yet we failed to understand 

That there was courage in his fears 
And strength within his gentle hand: 

We did not mean to be unkind, 

But we were dull of heart and mind! 



But when the drum-beat through the night 
And men were called, with voice austere, 

To die for England's sake — and right. 
He was the first to answer, "Here!" 

His courage, long submerged, arose, 

When at her gates, knocked England's foes! 



And so to-day, where the brave dead 
Sleep sweetly amid Flemish bowers, 

One grave, in thought, is garlanded 
With prairie flowers! 

And if the dead in realms of bliss 

Can think on those they knew below, 

He'll know we're sorry, and that this 
Is our poor way of saying so! 

The war has put a new face on our neighbor- 
hood life; it has searched out and tried the hid- 
den places of our souls, and strange, indeed, 
have been its findings. By its severe testings 

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some of those who we thought were our strong- 
est people have been abased, and some of the 
weak ones have been exalted. There were some 
of our people who were good citizens in the nor- 
mal times of peace, but who could not stand 
against the sterner test of war; and then again 
we have found the true worth of some of those 
whom in our dull, short-sighted way we did not 
know! 

Stanley Goodman came to our neighborhood 
when he was a lad of sixteen. The Church of 
England clergyman, who knew his people in 
England, brought him to Mrs. Corbett, who 
kept the Black Creek Stopping House, and 
asked her if she could give him a room and look 
after him. He told her of the great wealth and 
social position of the family who were willing 
to pay well for the boy's keep. 

"If they are as well off as all that," said 
Mrs. Corbett, "why are they sending the wee 
lad out here, away from all of them?" 

The clergyman found it hard to explain. "It 
seems that this boy is not quite like the other 
members of the family — not so bright, I take 

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The Next of Kin 

It," he said; "and the father particularly is a 
bit disappointed in him!" 

"Do you mean," said Mrs. Corbett, "that 
they are ashamed of the poor little fellow, and 
are sending him out here to get rid of him? 
Faith, if that's the kind of heathen there Is in 
England I don't know why they send mission- 
aries out here to preach to us. Bad and all as 
we are, there is none of us that would do the 
like of that!" 

"They will provide handsomely for him In 
every way, Mrs. Corbett, and leave no wish 
ungratified," the minister said uneasily. 

Mrs. Corbett was a difficult person in some 
ways. 

"Oh, sure, they will give him everything but 
love and home, and that'll be what the poor 
wee lad will hunger for! Money is a queer thing 
for sure, when It will make a mother forget the 
child that she brought into the world!" 

" I think the mother — from what I can 
gather — wanted to keep the boy, but the 
father is a very proud man, and this lad aggra- 
vated him some way just to see him, and the 

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mother yielded to his wishes, as a true wife 
should, and for the sake of peace has withdrawn 
her objections." 

"A poor soft fool, that's all she Is, to let a 
domineering old reprobate send her poor lad 
away, just because he did not like to see him 
around, and him his own child ! And even you, 
Mr. Tilton, who have been out here living with 
civilized people for three years, have enough of 
the old country way In you yet to say that a 
true wife should consent to this to please the 
old tyrant! Faith, I don't blame the Suffra- 
gettes for smashing windows, and If I was n't so 
busy feeding hungry men, I believe I would go 
over and give them a hand, only I would be 
more careful what I was smashing and would 
not waste my time on Innocent windows!" 

"But you will take him, won't you, Mrs. 
Corbett.'* I will feel quite easy about him If you 
will!" 

"I suppose I'll have to. I can't refuse when 
his own have deserted him ! I would be a poor 
member of the Army If I did not remember Our 
Lord's promise to the poor children when their 

IIS 



The Next of Kin 

fathers and mothers forsake them, and I will 
try to carry it out as well as I can." 

Stanley was soon established in the big white- 
washed room in Mrs. Corbett's boarding-house. 
He brought with him everything that any boy 
could ever want, and his room, which he kept 
spotlessly clean, with its beautiful rug, pictures, 
and books, was the admiration of the neighbor- 
hood. 

Stanley understood the situation and spoke 
of it quite frankly. 

"My father thought It better for me to come 
away for a while, to see if it would not toughen 
me up a bit. He has been rather disappointed 
In me, I think. You see, I had an accident when 
I was a little fellow and since then I have not 
been — quite right." 

"Just think of that," Mrs. Corbett said after- 
wards in telling it to a sympathetic group of 
"Stoppers." "It would n't be half so bad if the 
poor boy did n't know that he is queer. I tried 
to reason it out of him, but he said that he had 
heard the housekeeper and the parlor-maid at 
home talking of it, and they said he was a bit 

ii6 



Permission 

looney. It would n't be half so bad for him if 
he was not so near to being all right! If ever I 
go wrong in the head I hope I'll be so crazy 
that I won't know that I 'm crazy. Craziness is 
like everything else — it's all right if you have 
enough of it!" 

"Stanley is not what any one would call 
crazy," said one of the Stoppers; "the only 
thing I can see wrong with him is that you 
always know what he is going to say, and he is 
too polite, and every one can fool him! He cer- 
tainly is a good worker, and there's another 
place he shows that he is queer, for he does n't 
need to work and still he does it! He likes it, 
and thanked me to-day for letting him clean 
my team; and as a special favor I'm going to 
let him hitch them up when I am ready to go!" 

Stanley busied himself about the house, and 
was never so happy as when he was rendering 
some service to some one. But even in his hap- 
piest moments there was always the wistful 
longing for home, and when he was alone with 
Mrs. Corbett he freely spoke of his hopes and 
fears. 

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The Next of Kin 

"It may not be so long before they begin to 
think that they would like to see me; do you 
think that it is really true that absence makes 
the heart grow fonder — even of people — 
like me? I keep thinking that maybe they will 
send for me after a while and let me stay for a 
few days anyway. My mother will want to see 
me, I am almost sure, — indeed, she almost said 
as much, — and she said many times that she 
hoped that I would be quite happy; and when I 
left she kissed me twice, and even the governor 
shook hands with me and said, 'You will be all 
right out there in Canada.' He was so nice with 
me, it made it jolly hard to leave." 

Another day, as he dried the dishes for her, 
assuring her that it was a real joy for him to be 
let do this, he analyzed the situation again: — 

"My father's people are all very large and 
handsome," he said, "and have a very com- 
manding way with them; my father has always 
been obeyed, and always got what he wanted. 
It was my chin which bothered him the most. 
It is not much of a chin, I know; it retreats, 
does n't it.^* But I cannot help it. But I have 

Ii8 



Permission 

always been a bitter disappointment to him, 
and it really has been most uncomfortable for 
mother — he seemed to blame her some way, 
too; and often and often I found her looking at 
me so sadly and saying, 'Poor Stanley!' and all 
my aunts, when they came to visit, called me 
that. It was — not pleasant." 

Every week his letter came from home, with 
books and magazines and everything that a 
boy could wish for. His delight knew no 
bounds. "They must think something of me," 
he said over and over again! At first he wrote 
a letter to his mother every day, but a curt note 
came from his father one day telling him that 
he must try to interest himself in his surround- 
ings and that it would be better if he wrote only 
once a week ! The weekly letter then became an 
event, and he copied it over many times. Mrs. 
Corbett, busy with her work of feeding the 
traveling public, often paused long enough in 
her work of peeling the potatoes or rolling out 
pie-crust to wipe her hands hastily and read the 
letter that he had written and pass judgment 
on it, 

XJ9 



The Next of Kin 

Feeling that all green Englishmen were their 
legitimate prey for sport, the young bloods of 
the neighborhood, led by Pat Brennan, Mrs. 
Corbett's nephew, began to tell Stanley strange 
and terrible stories of Indians, and got him to 
send home for rifles and knives to defend him- 
self and the neighborhood from their traitorous 
raids, "which were sure to be made on the settle- 
ments as soon as the cold weather came and the 
Indians got hungry." He was warned that he 
must not speak to Mrs. Corbett about this, for 
it is never wise to alarm the women. "We will 
have trouble enough without having a lot of 
hysterical women on our hands," said Pat. 

After the weapons had come "The Exter- 
minators" held a session behind closed doors to 
see what was the best plan of attack, and de- 
cided that they would not wait for the Indians 
to begin the trouble, but would make war on 
them. They decided that they would beat the 
bushes for Indians down in the river-bottom, 
while Stanley would sit at a certain point of 
vantage in a clump of willows, and as the 
Indians ran past him, he would pot them ! 

J2P 



Permission 

Stanley had consented to do this only after 
he had heard many tales of Indian treachery 
and cruelty to the settlers and their families ! 

The plan was carried out and would no doubt 
have been successful, but for the extreme scar- 
city of Indians in our valley. 

All night long Stanley sat at his post, peering 
into the night, armed to the teeth, shivering 
with the cold wind that blew through the val- 
ley. His teeth chattered with fright sometimes, 
too, as the bushes rustled behind him, and an 
Inquisitive old cow who came nosing the wil- 
lows never knew how near death she had been. 
Meanwhile his traitorous companions went 
home and slept soundly and sweetly in their 
warm beds. 

"And even after he found out that we were 
fooling him, he was not a bit sore," said Pat. 
"He tried to laugh! That is what made me feel 
cheap — he is too easy; it's too much like taking 
candy from a kid. And he was mighty square 
about it, too, and he never told Aunt Maggie 
how he got the cold, for he slipped into bed that 
morning and she did n't know he was out." 

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The Next of Kin 

Another time the boys set him to'gathering the 
pufF-balls that grew in abundance In the hay 
meadow, assuring him that they were gopher- 
eggs and if placed under a hen would hatch out 
young gophers. 

Stanley was wild with enthusiasm when he 
heard this and hastened to pack a box full to 
send home. "They will be surprised," he said. 
Fortunately, Mrs. Corbett found out about 
this before the box was sent, and she had to tell 
him that the boys were only In fun. 

When she told him that the boys had been 
just having sport there came over his face such 
a look of sadness and pain, such a deeply hurt 
look, that Mrs. Corbett went back to the barn 
and thrashed her sturdy young nephew, all over 
again. 

When the matter came up for discussion 
again, Stanley Implored her not to speak of it 
any more, and not to hold it against the boys. 
"It was not their fault at all," he said; "it all 
comes about on account of my being — not 
quite right. I am not quite like other boys, but 
when they play with me I forget it and I be- 

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Permission 

lieve what they say. There Is — something 
wrong with me, — and it makes people want — 
to have sport with me; but it is not their fault 

at all." ' 

"Well, they won't have sport with you when 
I am round," declared Mrs. Corbett stoutly. 

Years rolled by and Stanley still cherished 
the hope that some day "permission" would 
come for him to go home. He grew very fast 
and became rather a fine-looking young man. 
Once, emboldened by a particularly kind letter 
from his mother, he made the request that he 
should be allowed to go home for a few days. 
"If you will let me come home even for one 
day, dearest mother," he wrote, "I will come 
right back content, and father will not need to 
see me at all. I want to stand once more before 
that beautiful Tissot picture of Christ holding 
the wounded lamb in his arms, and I would like 
to see the hawthorn hedge when it is in bloom 
as it will be soon, and above all, dear mother, 
I want to see you. And I will come directly 

away." 

He held this letter for many days, and was 
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The Next of Kin 

only emboldened to send it by Mrs. Corbett's 
heartiest assurances that it was a splendid let- 
ter and that his mother would like it! 

"I do not want to give my mother trouble," 
he said. "She has already had much trouble 
with me; but it might make her more content 
to see me and to know that I am so well — and 
happy." 

After the letter had been sent, Stanley 
counted the days anxiously, and on the big map 
of Canada that hung on the kitchen wall he fol- 
lowed its course until it reached Halifax, and 
then his mind went with it tossing on the ocean. 

"I may get my answer any day after Fri- 
day," he said. "Of course I do not expect it 
right off — it will take some little time for 
mother to speak to father, and, besides, he 
might not be at home; so I must not be disap- 
pointed if it seems long to wait." 

Friday passed and many weeks rolled by, and 
still Stanley was hopeful. "They are consider- 
ing," he said, "and that is so much better than 
if they refused; and perhaps they are looking 
about a boat — I think that must be what is 

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Permission 

keeping the letter back. I feel so glad and 
happy about it, it seems that permission must 
be coming." 

In a month a bulky parcel came to him by 
express. It contained a framed picture of the 
Good Shepherd carrying the lost lamb in his 
arms; a box of hawthorn blossoms, faded but 
still fragrant, and a book which gave directions 
for playing solitaire in one hundred and twenty- 
three ways ! ! 

Mrs. Corbett hastened to his room when she 
heard the cry of pain that escaped his lips. He 
stood in the middle of the floor with the book 
in his hand. All the boyishness had gone out of 
his face, which now had the spent look of one 
who has had a great fright or sufliered great 
pain. The book on solitaire had pierced through 
his cloudy brain with the thought that his was 
a solitary part in life, and for a few moments 
he went through the panicky grief of the faith- 
ful dog who finds himself left on the shore while 
his false master sails gayly away! 

"I will be all right directly," he stammered, 
making a pitiful effort to control his tears. 

125 



The Next of Kin 

Mrs. Corbett politely appeared not to notice, 
and went hastily downstairs, and although not 
accustomed to the use of the pen, yet she took 
it in hand and wrote a letter to Stanley's father. 

"It is a pity that your poor lad did not in- 
herit some of your hardness of heart, Mr. Good- 
man," the letter began, "for if he did he would 
not be upstairs now breakin his and sobbin 
it out of him at your cruel answer to his natural 
request that he might go home and see his 
mother. But he has a heart of gold wherever he 
got it I don't know, and it is just a curse to him 
to be so constant in his love for home, when 
there is no love or welcome there for him. He is 
a lad that any man might well be proud of him, 
that gentle and kind and honest and truthful, 
not like most of the young doods that come out 
here drinkin and carousin and raisin the divll. 
mebbe you would like him better if he was and 
this is just to tell you that we like your boy 
here and we dont think much of the way you 
are using him and I hope that you will live to see 
the day that you will regret with tears more 
bitter than he is sheddin now the way you have 

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Permission 

treated him, and with these few lines I will close 
M corbett." 

How this letter was received at Mayflower 
Lodge, Bucks, England, is not known, for no 
answer was ever sent; and although the letters 
to Stanley came regularly, his wish to go home 
was not mentioned in any of them. Neither 
did he ever refer to it again. 

"Say, Stan," said young Pat one day, sud- 
denly smitten with a bright thought, "why 
don't you go home anyway .f* You have lots of 
money — why don't you walk in on 'em and 
give 'em a surprise?" 

"It would not be playing the game, Pat; 
thank you all the same, old chap," said Stanley 
heartily, "but I will not go home without per- 
mission." 

After that Stanley got more and more reti- 
cent about the people at home. He seemed to 
realize that they had cut him off, but the home- 
sick look never left his eyes. His friends now 
were the children of the neighborhood and the 
animals. Dogs, cats, horses, and children fol- 
lowed him, and gave him freely of their affec- 

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The Next of Kin 

tion. He worked happy hours In Mrs. Corbett's 
garden, and "Stanley's flowers" were the ad- 
miration of the neighborhood. 

When he was not busy in the garden, he spent 
long hours beside the river in a beautifully fash- 
ioned seat which he had made for himself, be- 
neath a large poplar tree. " It Is the wind In the 
tree-tops that I like," he said. " It whispers to 
me. I can't tell what it says, but It says some- 
thing. I like trees — they are like people some 
way — only more patient and friendly." 

The big elms and spruce of the river valley 
rustled and whispered together, and the pop- 
lars shook their coin-like leaves as he lay be- 
neath their shade. The trees were trying to be 
kind to him, as the gray olive trees in Geth- 
semane were kind to One Other when his own 
had forgotten Him ! 

When the news of the war fell upon the 
Pembina Valley, it did not greatly disturb 
the peacefulness of that secluded spot. The 
well-to-do farmers who had held their grain 
over openly rejoiced at the prospect of better 

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Permission 

prices, and the younger men, when asked to 
enlist, repHed by saying that the people who 
made the war had better do the fighting because 
they had no ambition to go out and stop Ger- 
man bullets. The general feeling was that it 
would soon be over. 

At the first recruiting meeting Stanley vol- 
unteered his services by walking down the aisle 
of the church at the first invitation. The re- 
cruiting officer motioned to him to be seated, 
and that he would see him after the meeting. 

Stanley waited patiently until every person 
was gone, and then timidly said, "And now, 
sir, will you please tell me what I am to do.^" 

The recruiting officer, a dapper little fellow, 
very pompous and important, turned him down 
mercilessly. Stanley was dismayed. He wan- 
dered idly out of the church and was about to 
start off on his four-mile walk to the Stopping 
House when a sudden impulse seized him and 
he followed the recruiting agent to the house 
where he was staying. 

He overtook him just as he was going into 
the house, and, seizing him by the arm, cried, 

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The Next of Kin 

"Don't you see, sir, that you must take me? 
I am strong and able — I tell you I am no cow- 
ard — what have you against me, I want to 
know?" 

The recruiting officer hesitated. Confound 
it all! It is a hard thing to tell a man that he 
is not exactly right in the head. 

But he did not need to say It, for Stanley 
beat him to It. "I know what's wrong," he said; 
"you think I'm not very bright — I am not, 
either. But don't you see, war is an elemental 
sort of thing. I can do what I 'm told — and I 
can fight. What does it matter If my head is 
not very clear on some things which are easy 
to you ? And don't you see how much I want to 
go? Life has not been so sweet that I should 
want to hold on to it. The young men here do 
not want to go, for they are having such a good 
time. But there Is nothing ahead of me that 
holds me back. Can't you see that, sir? Won't 
you pass me on, anyway, and let me have my 
chance? Give me a trial; it's time enough to 
turn me down when I fail at something. Won't 
you take me, sir?" 

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Permission 

The recruiting officer sadly shook his head. 
Stanley watched him in an agony of suspense. 
Here was his way out — his way of escape from 
this body of death that had hung over him ever 
since he could remember. He drew nearer to 
the recruiting officer, — "For God's sake, sir, 
take me!" he cried. 

Then the recruiting officer pulled himself to- 
gether and grew firm and commanding. "I 
won't take you," he said, "and that's all there 
is about it. This is a job for grown-up men and 
men with all their wits about them. You would 
faint at the sight of blood and cry when you 
saw the first dead man." 

In a few weeks another recruiting meeting 
was held, and again Stanley presented himself 
when the first invitation was given. The re- 
cruiting officer remembered him, and rather 
impatiently told him to sit down. Near the 
front of the hall sat the German-American 
storekeeper of the neighboring town, who had 
come to the meeting to see what was going on, 
and had been interrupting the speaker with 
many rude remarks; and when Stanley, in his 

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The Next of Kin 

immaculate suit of gray check, his gray spats, 
and his eyeglass, passed by where he was sit- 
ting, it seemed as if all his slumbering hatred for 
England burst at once Into flame! 

"My word!" he mimicked, "'ere's a rum 
'un — somebody should warn the Kaiser! It's 
not fair to take the poor man unawares — 
here Is some of the real old English fighting- 
stock." 

Stanley turned In surprise and looked his 
tormentor in the face. His look of insipid good- 
nature lured the German on. 

"That Is what Is wrong with the British Em- 
pire," he jeered; "there are too many of these 
underbred aristocrats, all pedigree and no 
brains, Hke the long-nosed collies. God help 
them when they meet the Germans — that Is 
all I have to say!" 

He was quite right in his last sentence — that 
was all he had to say. It was his last word for 
the evening, and It looked as If It might be his 
last word for an Indefinite time, for the unex- 
pected happened. 

Psychologists can perhaps explain It. We 
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Permission 

cannot. Stanley, who like charity had borne all 
things, endured all things, believed all things, 
suddenly became a new creature, a creature 
of rage, blind, consuming, terrible! You have 
heard of the worm turning? This was a case of 
a worm turning into a tank! 

People who were there said that Stanley 
seemed to grow taller, his eyes glowed, his chin 
grew firm, his shoulders ceased to be apologetic. 
He whirled upon the German and landed a blow 
on his jaw that sounded like a blow-out! Before 
any one could speak, it was followed by another 
and the German lay on the floor! 

Then Stanley turned to the astonished audi- 
ence and delivered the most successful recruit- 
ing speech that had ever been given in the 
Pembina Valley. 

"You have sat here all evening," he cried, 
"and have listened to this miserable hound in- 
sulting your country — this man who came here 
a few years ago without a cent and now has 
made a fortune In Canada, and I have no 
doubt Is now conspiring with Canada's ene- 
mies, and would betray us Into the hands of 

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The Next of Kin 

those enemies if he could. For this man I have 
the hatred which one feels for an enemy, but 
for you Canadians who have sat here and 
swallowed his insults, I have nothing but con- 
tempt. This man belongs to the race of peo- 
ple who cut hands off children, and outrage 
women; and now, when our Empire calls for 
men to go out and stop these devilish things, 
you sit here and let this traitor insult your 
country. You are all braver than I am, too; 
I am only a joke to most of you, a freak, a 
looney, — you have said so, — but I won't 
stand for this." 

That night recruiting began in the valley 
and Stanley was the first man to sign on. The 
recruiting agent felt that it was impossible to 
turn down a man who ;had shown !so much 
fighting spirit; and, besides, he was a small man 
and he had a face which he prized highly! 

When the boys of the valley went to Val- 
cartier there was none among them who had 
more boxes of home-made candy or more pairs 
of socks than Stanley; nor was any woman 
prouder of her boy than Mrs. Corbett was of 

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Permission 

the lad she had taken into her home and into 
her heart ten years before. 

They were sent overseas almost at once, and, 
after a short training in England, went at once 
to the firing-line. 

It was a dull, foggy morning, and although it 
was quite late the street-lamps were still burn- 
ing, and while they could not make much im- 
pression on the darkness, at least they made a 
luminous top on the lamp-posts and served as a 
guide to the travelers who made their way into 
the city. In the breakfast-room of Mayflower 
Lodge it was dark, and gloomier still, for "the 
master" was always in his worst mood in the 
morning, and on this particular morning his 
temper was aggravated by the presence of his 
wife's mother and two sisters from Leith, who 
always made him envious of the men who 
marry orphans, who are also the last of their 
race. 

Mr. Goodman was discussing the war-situa- 
tion, and abusing the Government in that pecu- 
liarly bitter way of the British patriot. 

135 



The Next of Kin 

His wife, a faded, subdued little woman, sat 
opposite him and contributed to the conversa- 
tion twittering little broken phrases of assent. 
Her life had been made up of scenes like this. 
She was of the sweet and pliable type, which, 
with the best intentions in the world, has made 
life hard for other women. 

Mr. Goodman gradually worked back to his 
old grievance. 

"This is a time for every man to do his bit, 
and here am I too old to go and with no son to 
represent me — I who came from a family of 
six sons ! Anyway, why does n't the Govern- 
ment pass conscription and drag out the slack- 
ers who lounge in the parks and crowd the 
theaters?" 

Aunt Louisa paused in the act of helping her- 
self to marmalade and regarded him with great 
displeasure; then cried shrilly: — 

"Now, Arthur, that is nothing short of trea- 
son, for I tell you we will not allow our dear 
boys to be taken away like galley-slaves; I tell 
you Britons never, never shall be slaves, and I 
for one will never let my Bertie go — his young 

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Permission 

life is too precious to be thrown away. I spent 
too many nights nursing him through every in- 
fantile disease — measles, whooping-cough, — 
you know yourself, my dear Clara, — beside 
the times that he broke his arm and his leg; 
though I still think that the cold compress is the 
best for a delicate constitution, and I actually 
ordered the doctor out of the house — " 

"What has that to do with conscription?" 
asked her brother-in-law gruffly. "I tell you it 
is coming and no one will be gladder than I am." 

"I think It Is nothing short of unkind the 
way that you have been speaking of the Ger- 
mans. I know I never got muffins like the 
muffins I got in Berlin that time; and, anyway, 
there are plenty of the commoner people to go 
to fight, and they have such large families that 
they will not miss one as I would miss my 
Bertie, and he has just recently become en- 
gaged to such a dear girl! In our home we 
simply try to forget this stupid war, but when 
I come here I hear nothing else — I wonder 
how you stand It, dear Clara." 

Aunt Louisa here dabbed her eyes with her 
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The Next of Kin 

handkerchief in a way that her brother-in-law 
particularly detested. 

"You will hear more about the war some of 
these days," he said, "when a German Zeppelin 
drops bombs on London." 

Aunt Louisa came as near snorting as a well- 
bred lady could come, so great was her dis- 
dain at this suggestion. 

"Zeppelin!" she said scornfully — "on Eng- 
land ! ! You forget, sir, that we are living in a 
civilized age ! Zeppelin! Indeed, and who would 
let them, I wonder! I am surprised at you, sir, 
and so is mother, although she has not spoken." 

"You will probably be more surprised before 
long; life is full of surprises these days." 

Just then the butler brought him a wire, the 
contents of which seemed to bear out this the- 
ory, for it told him that Private Stanley Good- 
man, of the First Canadian Battalion, for 
conspicuous bravery under fire had been recom- 
mended for the D.C.M., but regretted to inform 
him that Private Goodman had been seriously 
wounded and was now in the Third Canadian 
Hospital, Flanders. 

138 



Permission 

The nursing sister, accustomed to strange 
sights, wondered why this wounded man was so 
cold, and then she noticed that he had not on 
his overcoat, and she asked him why he was 
not wearing it on such a bitter cold night as this. 
In spite of all his efforts his teeth chattered as 
he tried to answer her. 

" I had to leave a dead friend of mine on the 
field to-night," said Stanley, speaking with 
difficulty. "And I could not leave him there 
with the rain falling on him, could I, sister? It 
seemed hard to have to leave him, anyway, 
but we got all the wounded in." 

In twenty-four hours after they received the 
telegram his father and mother stood by his 
bedside. Only his eyes and his forehead could 
be seen, for the last bullet which struck him 
had ploughed its way through his cheek; the 
chin which had so oflFended his father's artistic 
eye — what was left of It — was entirely hid- 
den by the bandage. The chill which he had 
taken, with the loss of blood, and the shock of 
a shrapnel wound In his side, made recovery 

139 



The Next of Kin 

impossible, the nurse said. While they stood 
beside the bed waiting for him to open his eyes, 
the nurse told them of his having taken off his 
coat to cover a dead comrade. 

When at last Stanley opened his eyes, there 
was a broken and sorrowful old man, from 
whose spirit all the imperious pride had gone, 
kneeling by his bedside and humbly begging 
his forgiveness. On the other side of the bed his 
mother stood with a great joy in her faded face. 

"Stanley — Stanley," sobbed his father, 
every resei've broken down; "I have just found 
you — and now how can I lose you so soon. 
Try to live for my sake, and let me show you 
how sorry I am." 

Stanley's eyes showed the distress which 
filled his tender heart. 

"Please don't, father," he said, speaking with 
difficulty; "I am only very happy — indeed, 
quite jolly. But you must n't feel sorry, father 
— I have been quite a duffer! thanks awfully 
for all you have done for me — I know how dis- 
appointed you were in me — I did want to 
make good for your sakes and it is a bit rough 

140 



Permission 

that now — I should be obliged — to die. . . . 
But it is best to go while the going is good — 
isn't it, sir? It's all a beautiful dream — to 
me — and it does seem — so jolly — to have 
you both here." 

He lay still for a long time; then, rousing him- 
self, said, "I'm afraid I have been dreaming 
again — no, this Is father; you are sure, sir, are 
you? — about the medal and all that — and 
this is mother, is it? — it is all quite like going 
home — I am so happy; it seems as if permis- 
sion had come." 

He laughed softly behind his bandages, a 
queer, little, choking, happy laugh; and there, 
with his mother's arms around him, while his 
father, stern no longer, but tender and loving, 
held his hand, "permission" came and the 
homesick, hungry heart of the boy entered into 
rest. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SLACKER— IN UNIFORM 

Mrs. p. a. Brunton was convinced that she 
was an exceptional woman in every way. She 
would tell you this in the first fifteen minutes 
of conversation that you had with her, for 
many of her sentences began, "Now, I know, 
of course, that I am peculiar in many ways"; 
or, "I am afraid you will not understand me 
when I say this"; or, "I am afraid I am hope- 
lessly old-fashioned in this." She would explain 
with painstaking elaboration that she did not 
know why she was so peculiar, but her manner 
indicated that she was quite content to be so; 
indeed, it can only be described as one of boast- 
ful resignation. She seemed to glory in her 
infirmity. 

Mrs. Brunton was quite opposed to women 
voting, and often spoke with sorrow of the 
movement, which to her meant the breaking-up 
of the home and all its sacred traditions. She 

142 



The Slacker — In Uniform 

did not specify how this would be done, but her 
attitude toward all new movements was one 
of keen distrust. She often said that of course 
she would be able to vote Intelligently, for she 
had had many advantages and had listened to 
discussions of public matters all her life, having 
been brought up In an atmosphere of advanced 
thinking; but she realized that her case was an 
exceptional one. It was not the good fortune of 
every woman to have had a college course as 
she had, and she really could not see what good 
could come from a movement which aimed at 
making all women equal ! Why, If women ever 
got the vote, an Ignorant washwoman's vote 
might kill hers! It was so much better to let 
women go on as they were going, exerting their 
indirect influence; and then It was the woman 
of wealth and social prestige who was able to 
exert this influence, just as It should be! She cer- 
tainly did not crave a vote, and would do all she 
could to prevent other women from getting it. 
Mrs. Brunton had come from the East, and 
although she had lived many years in the West, 
she could never forget what a sacrifice she had 

143 



The Next of Kin 

made by coming to a new countr}^. Being a coir 
lege graduate, too, seemed to be something she 
could not outgrow! 

When her only boy was old enough to go to 
school, she became the teacher's bad dream, for 
she wrote many notes and paid many calls to 
explain that Garth was not at all like other chil- 
dren and must not be subjected to the same dis- 
cipline as they, for he had a proud and haughty 
spirit that would not submit to discipline unless 
it were tactfully disguised. Garth was a quiet, 
mild little lad who would have been much like 
other boys if left alone. 

Garth was twenty years old when the war 
began, and he was then attending the univer- 
sity. He first spoke of enlisting when the war 
had gone on a year. 

"Enlist!" his mother cried, when he men- 
tioned it to her, " I should say not — you are 
my only child, and I certainly did not raise you 
to be a soldier. There are plenty of common 
people to do the fighting; there are men who 
really like it; but I have other ambitions for you 
— you are to be a university man." 

144 



The Slacker— In Uniform 

When the Third University Company went, 
he spoke of it again, but his mother held firm. 

"Do you think I am going to have you sleep- 
ing in those awful trenches, with every Tom, 
Dick, and Harry? I tell you soldiering is a 
rough business, and I cannot let a boy of mine 
go — a boy who has had your advantages must 
not think of it." 

"But, mother, there are lots of boys going 
who have had just as good advantages as I 
have." 

Just then came in Emily Miller, the little 
girl from next door whose brother was going 
away the next day. Emily was an outspoken 
young lady of fourteen. 

"When are you going. Garth.?" she asked 
pointedly. 

"He is not going," said his mother firmly. 
"His duty is at home finishing his education, 
and I am simply amazed at your mother for 
letting Robert go. Does she not believe in edu- 
cation } Of course I know there are not many 
who lay the stress on it that I do, but with me 
it is education first — always." 

HS 



The Next of Kin 

"But the war won't wait," said Emily; "my 
mother would be very glad to have Bob finish 
his education, but she's afraid it will be over 
then." 

"War or no war, I say let the boys get their 
education — what is life without it?" 

Emily surveyed her calmly, and then said, 
"What would happen to us if every mother held 
her boy back — what if every mother took your 
attitude, Mrs. Brunton?" 

"You need not speculate on that, child, for 
they won't. Most mothers run with the popular 
fancy — they go with the crowd — never think- 
ing, but I have always been peculiar, I know." 

"Oh, mother, cut out that 'peculiar' busi- 
ness — it makes me tired!" said Garth unduti- 
fully. 

When Robert Miller came in to say good-bye, 
he said: "You'll be lonesome. Garth, when we 
all go and you are left with the women and the 
old men — but perhaps you will enjoy being 
the only young man at the party." 

"Garth may go later," said his mother, — 
"at least if the war lasts long enough, — but 

146 



The Slacker —In Uniform 

not as a private. I will not object to his taking 
the officers' classes at the university." 

"See, Bob," crowed Garth, "I'll have you 
and Jim Spaulding for my two batmen over 
there. But never mind, I '11 be good to you and 
will see that you get your ha'pennyworth of 
'baccy and mug of beer regular." 

Mrs. Brunton laughed delightedly. "Garth 
always sees the funny side," she cooed. 

"That certainly is a funny side all right," said 
Robert, "but he'll never see it! These paste- 
board officers never last after they get over — 
they can only carry it off here. Over there, 
promotions are on merit, not on political pull." 

The third, fourth, and fifth contingents went 
from the university, and still Garth pursued 
the quest of learning. His mother openly re- 
buked the mothers of the boys who had gone. 
"Let the man on the street go! Look at the un- 
employed men on our streets!" she said; "why 
are n't they made to go — and leave our uni- 
versity boys at home.^"' 

"Every man owes a duty to his country," 
one of the mothers said. "If one man neglects 

H7 



The Next of Kin 

or refuses to pay, that is no reason for others 
to do the same. This is a holy war — hoHer 
than any of the crusades — for the crusader 
went out to restore the tomb of our Lord, and 
that is only a material thing; but our boys are 
going out to give back to the world our Lord's 
ideals, and I know they are more precious to 
Him than any tomb could be!" 

"My dear Mrs. Mason," said Garth's mother, 
"you are simply war-mad like so many women 
— it is impossible to reason with you." 

A year went by, and many of the university 
boys were wounded and some were killed. To 
the mothers of these went Mrs. Brunton with 
words of sympathy, but came away wondering. 
Some way they did not seem to receive her 
warmly. 

"Where Is Garth now.^*" asked one of these 
women. 

"He's thinking of taking the officers' train- 
ing," answered Mrs. Brunton, "as soon as the 
college term closes. A boy meets the very 
nicest people there, and I do think that is so 
important, to meet nice people." 

148 



The Slacker — In Uniform 

"And no Germans!" said the other woman 
tartly.^ 

Mrs. Bmnton gave a very select and intel- 
lectual farewell party for Garth when he went 
to another city to take the officers' training, 
and she referred to him as "my brave soldier 
laddie," much to the amusement of some of the 
party. 

In two weeks he came home on leave of 
absence, very elegant in his new uniform. He 
also brought cabinet-sized photographs which 
cost eighteen dollars a dozen. Another party 
was held — the newspaper said he was the 
^^raison d'etre for many pleasant social gather- 
ings." 

At the end of two weeks he went out again 
to take more classes. He was very popular with 
the girls, and the mother of one of them came 
to visit Mrs. Brunton. They agreed on the sub- 
ject of military training and education, and 
exceptional women, and all was gay and happy. 

At the end of three months Garth again came 
home. No hero from the scenes of battle was 

149 



The Next of Kin 

ever more royally received, and an afternoon 
reception was held, when patriotic songs were 
sung and an uncle of the young man made a 
speech. 

Soon after that Garth went to Toronto and 
took another course, because his mother thought 
it was only right for him to see his own coun- 
try first, before going abroad; and, besides, 
no commission had yet been offered him. The 
short-sightedness of those in authority was a 
subject which Mrs. Brunton often dwelt on, 
but she said she could not help being glad. 

Meanwhile the war went wearily on; bat- 
talion after battalion went out and scattering 
remnants came home. Empty sleeves, rolled 
trousers legs, eyes that stared, and heads that 
rolled pitifully appeared on the streets. On the 
sunshiny afternoons many of these broken men 
sat on the verandas of the Convalescent Home 
and admired the smart young lieutenant who 
went whistling by — and wondered what force 
he was with. 

The war went on to the completion of its 
third year. Garth had attended classes in three 

150 



The Slacker — In Uniform 

cities, and had traveled Canada from end to end. 
There had been four farewell parties and three 
receptions in his honor. He came home again for 
what his mother termed "a well-earned rest." 

He sat on the veranda one day luxuriously 
ensconced in a wicker chair, smoking a cigar- 
ette whose blue wreaths of smoke he blew gayly 
from him. He was waiting for the postman — 
one of Mae's letters had evidently gone astray, 
and the postman, who seemed to be a stupid 
fellow, had probably given it to some one else. 
He had made several mistakes lately, and Garth 
determined that it was time he was reprimanded 
— the young officer would attend to that. 

"Posty" came at last, a few minutes late 
again, and Garth rapped imperiously with his 
cane, as "Posty," peering at the addresses of 
the letters, came up the steps. 

"See here," cried Garth, "let me see what 
you have!" 

"Posty" started nervously and the letters 
dropped from his hands. While he gathered 
them up. Garth in his most military manner 
delivered himself of a caustic rebuke: — 

151 



The Next of Kin 

"You have left letters here which belong else- 
where, and I have lost letters through your care- 
lessness. What is the matter with you any- 
way — can't you read?" he snapped. 

"Yes, sir," stammered "Posty," flushing as 
red as the band on his hat. 

"Well, then," went on the young officer, 
'*why don't you use your eyes — where do you 
keep them anyway?" 

"Posty" stood at attention as he answered 
with measured deliberation : — 

"I have one of them here . . . but I left the 
other one at Saint-Eloi. Were you thinking of 
hunting it up for me, sir, — when — you — go 
— over?" 

That was six weeks ago. Still the war goes 
on. Returned men walk our streets, new pale 
faces lie on hospital pillows, telegraph boys on 
wheels carry dread messages to the soldiers' 
homes. 

Garth has gone back to an Eastern city for 
another course (this time in signaling). He gave 
a whole set of buttons off his uniform to Mae 

152 



The Slacker — In Uniform 

before he went — and he had his photograph 
taken again! 

Even if he does not get over in time to do 
much in this war, it is worth something to have 
such a perfectly trained young officer ready for 
the next war! 



CHAPTER X 

NATIONAL SERVICE— ONE WAY 

There are some phrases in our conversations 
now that are used so often that they seem to 
be in some danger of losing their meaning. The 
snap goes out of them by too much handling, 
like an elastic band which has been stretched 
too far. One of these is "national service." 

If the work of the soldier, who leaves home, 
position, and safety behind him, and goes forth 
to meet hardship and danger, receiving as 
recompense one dollar and ten cents per day, 
is taken as the standard of comparison, the 
question of national service becomes very sim- 
ple, indeed, for there is but one class, and no 
other that is even distantly related to it, but if 
national service is taken to mean the doing of 
something for our country's good which we 
would not feel it our duty to do but for the 
emergencies created by the war, then there are 
many ways in which the sincere citizen may 
serve. 

154 



National Service — One Way 

The Abilene Valley School was closed all 
last year, and weeds are growing in the garden 
in which the year before flowers and vegetables, 
scarlet runners and cabbages, poppies and car- 
rots, had mingled in wild profusion. The art- 
muslin curtains are draggled and yellow, and 
some of the windows, by that strange fate 
which overtakes the windows in unoccupied 
houses, are broken. 

The school was not closed for lack of children. 
Not at all. Peter Rogowski, who lives a mile 
east, has seven children of school-age himself, 
from bright-eyed Polly aged fourteen to Olga 
aged six, and Mr. Rogowski Is merely one of 
the neighbors in this growing settlement, where 
large families are still to be found. There are 
twenty-four children of school-age in the dis- 
trict, and in 191 5, when Mr. Ellis taught there, 
the average attendance was nineteen. At the 
end of the term Mr. Ellis, who was a university 
student, abandoned his studies and took his 
place in the ranks of the Army Medical Corps, 
and is now nursing wounded men in France. 
He said that it would be easy to find some one 

155 



The Next of Kin 

else to take the school. He was thinking of the 
droves of teachers who had attended the Nor- 
mal with him. There seemed to be no end of 
them, but apparently there was, for in the year 
that followed there were more than one hundred 
and fifty schools closed because no teacher 
could be found. 

After waiting a whole year for a teacher to 
come, Polly Rogowski, as the spring of 191 7 
opened, declared her intention of going to Ed- 
monton to find work and go to school. Polly's 
mother upheld her in this determination, and 
together they scraped up enough money to pay 
her railway fare, and board for one week, al- 
though it took all that they had been putting 
away to get Mrs. Rogowski's teeth fixed. But 
Polly's mother knew that when her Polly began 
to teach there would be money and plenty for 
things like that, and anyway they had not ached 
so bad for a while. 

The city, even Edmonton, is a fearsome 
place for a fourteen-year-old girl who has no 
friends, seven dollars in money, and only an in- 
tense desire for an education to guide her 

156 



National Service — One Way 

through its devious ways. But the first night 
that Polly was away, her mother said an extra 
prayer before the Blessed Virgin, who, being a 
mother herself, would understand how much a 
young girl in a big city needs special care. 

It was a cold, dark day when Polly with her 
small pack arrived at the C.N.R. Station, and 
looked around her. Surely no crusader going 
forth to restore the tomb of his Lord ever 
showed more courage than black-eyed Polly 
when she set forth on this lonely pilgrimage to 
find learning. She had heard of the danger of 
picking up with strangers, and the awful barred 
windows behind which young girls languished 
and died, and so refused to answer when the 
Travelers' Aid of the Y.W.C.A. in friendliest 
tones asked if she might help her. 

Polly was not to be deceived by friendly tones. 
The friendly ones were the worst! She held her 
head high and walked straight ahead, just as if 
she knew where she was going. Polly had a plan 
of action. She was going to walk on and on un- 
til she came to a house marked in big letters 
"BOARDING-HOUSE," and she would go in 

157 



The Next of Kin 

there and tell the lady that she wanted to get a 
room for one day, and then she would leave her 
bundle and go out and find a school and see the 
teacher. Teachers were all good men and would 
help you! Then she would find a place where 
they wanted a girl to mind a baby or wash 
dishes, or maybe milk a cow; and perhaps she 
would have a bed all to herself. City houses were 
so big and had so many rooms, and she had 
heard that in some of the beds only one person 
slept! Having her programme so well laid out, 
it is no wonder that she refused to confide in the 
blue serge lady who spoke to her. 

Polly set off at a quick pace, looking straight 
ahead of her across the corner of the station 
yard, following the crowd. The Travelers' Aid 
followed close behind, determined to keep a 
close watch on the Independent little Russian 
girl. 

At the corner of First and Jasper, Polly 
stopped confused. A great crowd stood around 
the bulletin board and excitedly read the news 
of the Russian revolution; automobiles honked 
their horns, and street-cars clanged and news- 

158 



National Service — One Way 

boys shouted, and more people than Polly had 
ever seen before surged by her. For the first 
time Polly's stout heart failed her. She had not 
thought it would be quite like this! 

Turning round, she was glad to see the 
woman who had spoken to her at the station. 
In this great bustling, pushing throng she 
seemed like an old friend. 

"Do you know where I could find a boarding- 
house .f*" asked Polly breathlessly. 

The Travelers' Aid took her by the hand and 
piloted her safely across the street; and when 
the street-car had clanged by and she could be 
heard, she told Polly that she would take her 
to a boarding-house where she would be quite 
safe. 

Polly stopped and asked her what was the 
name of the place. 

"Y.W.C.A.," said the Aid, smiling. 

Polly gave a sigh of relief. "I know what 
that is," she said. "Mr. Ellis said that was the 
place to go when you go to a city. Will you let 
me stay until I find a school.^" 

"We'll find the school," said the other 
159 



The Next of Kin 

woman. "That is what we are for; we look after 
girls like you. We are glad to find a girl who 
wants to go to school." 

Polly laid her pack down to change hands and 
looked about her in delight. The big brick 
buildings, the store-windows, even the street- 
signs with their flaring colors, were all beautiful 
to her. 

"Gee!" she said, "I like the city — it's 
swell!" 

Polly was taken to the office of the secretary 
of the Y.W.C.A., and there, under the melting 
influence of Miss Bradshaw's kind eyes and 
sweet voice, she told all her hopes and fears. 

"Our teacher has gone to be a soldier and we 
could not get another, for they say it is too lone- 
some — out our way — and how can it be lone- 
some.^ There's children in every house. But, 
anyway, lady-teachers won't come and the men 
are all gone to the war. I '11 bet I won't be scared 
to teach when I grow up, but of course I won't 
be a lady; it's difl'erent with them — they are 
always scared of something. We have a cabin 
for the teacher, and three chairs and a painted 

i6o 



National Service — One Way- 
table and a stove and a bed, and a brass knob 
on the door, and we always brought cream and 
eggs and bread for the teacher; and we washed 
his dishes for him, and the girl that had the 
best marks all week could scrub his floor on 
Friday afternoons. He was so nice to us all that 
we all cried when he enlisted, but he explained 
it all to us — that there are some things dearer 
than life and he just felt that he had to go. He 
said that he would come back if he was not 
killed. Maybe he will only have one arm and 
one leg, but we won't mind as long as there is 
enough of him to come back. We tried and 
tried to get another teacher, but there are not 
enough to fill the good schools, and ours is 
twenty miles from a station and in a foreign 
settlement. ... I'm foreign, too," she added 
honestly; "I'm Russian." 

"The Russians are our allies," said the sec- 
retary, "and you are a real little Canadian 
now, Polly, and you are not a bit foreign. I was 
born in Tipperary myself, and that is far away 
from Canada, too." 

*'0h, yes, I know about it being a long way 
i6i 



The Next of Kin 

there," Polly said. "But that does n't matter, 
it is the language that counts. You see my 
mother can't talk very good English and that Is 
what makes us foreign, but she wants us all to 
know English, and that is why she let me come 
away, and I will do all I can to learn, and I will 
be a teacher some day, and then I will go back 
and plant the garden and she will send me but- 
ter, for I will live in the cabin. But it is too bad 
that we cannot have a teacher to come to us, for 
now, when I am away, there is no one to teach 
my mother English, for Mary does not speak the 
English well by me, and the other children will 
soon forget it if we cannot get a teacher." 

While she was speaking, the genial secretary 
was doing some hard thinking. This little mes- 
senger from the up-country had carried her 
message right Into the heart of one woman, one 
who was accustomed to carry her impulses into 
action. 

The Local Council of Women of the City of 
Edmonton met the next day in the club-room of 
the Y.W.C.A., and it was a well-attended meet- 

162 



National Service — One Way 

ing, for the subject to be discussed was that of 
"National Service for Women." As the time 
drew near for the meeting to begin, it became 
evident that great interest was being taken in 
the subject, for the room was full, and ani- 
mated discussions were going on in every cor- 
ner. This was not the first meeting that had 
been held on this subject, and considerable 
indignation was heard that no notice had been 
taken by the Government of the request that 
had been sent in some months previous, asking 
that women be registered for national service as 
well as men. 

"They never even replied to our suggestion," 
one woman said. "You would have thought 
that common politeness would have prompted 
a reply. It was a very civil note that we sent — 
I wrote it myself." 

"Hush ! Don't be hard on the Government," 
said an older woman, looking up from her knit- 
ting. "They have their own troubles — think 
of Quebec ! And then you know women's work 
is always taken for granted; they know we will 
do our bit without being listed or counted." 

163 



The Next of Kin 

"But I want to do something else besides 
knitting," the first speaker said; "it could be 
done better and cheaper anyway by machinery, 
and that would set a lot of workers free. Why 
don't we register ourselves, all of us who mean 
business? This is our country, and If the Gov- 
ernment Is asleep at the switch, that is no 
reason why we should be. I tell you I am for 
conscription for every man and woman." 

"Well, suppose we all go with you and sign 
up — name, age, present address; married? — 
if so, how often? — and all that sort of thing; 
what will you do with us, then?" asked Miss 
Wheatly, who was just back from the East 
where she had been taking a course In art. " I 
am tired of having my feelings all wrought upon 
and then have to settle down to knitting a dull 
gray sock or the easy task of collecting Red 
Cross funds from perfectly willing people who 
ask me to come in while they make me a cup 
of tea. I feel like a real slacker, for I have never 
yet done a hard thing. I did not let any one 
belonging to me go, for the fairly good reason 
that I have no male relatives ; I give money, but 

164 



National Service — One Way 

I have never yet done without a meal or a new 
pair of boots when I wanted them. There Is no 
use of talking of putting me to work on a farm, 
for no farmer would be bothered with me for a 
minute, and the farmer's wife has trouble 
enough now without giving her the care of a 
greenhorn like me — why, I would not know 
when a hen wanted to set!" 

"You do not need to know," laughed the con- 
scrlptlonlst ; " the hen will attend to that without 
any help from you ; and, anyway, we use incuba- 
tors now and the hen is exempt from all family 
cares — she can have a Career if she wants to." 

"I am In earnest about this," Miss Wheatly 
declared; "I am tired of this eternal talk of 
national service and nothing coming of It. Now, 
if any of you know of a hard, full-sized woman's 
job that I can do, you may lead me to It!" 

Then the meeting began. There was a very 
enthusiastic speaker who told of the great gift 
that Canada had given to the Empire, the gift 
of men and wheat, bread and blood — the sac- 
rament of empire. She then told of what a 
sacrifice the men make who go to the front, 

165 



The Next of Kin 

who lay their young Hves down for their coun- 
try and do it all so cheerfully. "And now," 
she said, "what about those of us who stay at 
home, who have three good meals every day, 
who sleep in comfortable beds and have not 
departed in any way from our old comfortable 
way of living. Would n't you like to do some- 
thing to help win the war?" 

There was a loud burst of applause here, but 
Miss Wheatly sat with a heavy frown on her 
face. 

"Was n't that a perfectly wonderful speech?" 
the secretary whispered to her when the speaker 
had finished with a ringing verse of poetry all 
about sacrifice and duty. 

"It is all the same old bunk," Miss Wheatly 
said bitterly; "I often wonder how they can 
speak so long and not make one practical sug- 
gestion. Would n't you like to help win the 
war? That sounds so foolish — of course we 
would like to win the war. It is like the old- 
fashioned evangelists who used to say, * All who 
would like to go to heaven will please stand up.' 
Everybody stood, naturally." 

i66 



National Service — One Way 

While they were whispering, they missed the 
announcement that the president was making, 
which was that there was a young girl from the 
North Country who had come to the meeting 
and wished to say a few words. There was a 
deep, waiting silence, and then a small voice 
began to speak. It was Miss Polly Rogowski 
from the Abilene Valley District. 

There was no fear in Polly's heart — she was 
not afraid of anything. Not being a lady, of 
course, and having no reputation to sustain, 
and being possessed with one thought, and com- 
plete master of it, her speech had true elo- 
quence. She was so small that the women at 
the back of the room had to stand up to see her. 

"I live at Abilene Valley and there are lots 
of us. I am fourteen years old and Mary is 
twelve, and Annie is eleven, and Mike is ten, 
and Peter is nine, and Ivan is seven, and Olga 
is six, and that is all we have old enough to go 
to school; but there are lots more of other chil- 
dren in our neighborhood, but our teacher has 
gone away to the war and we cannot get an- 
other one, for lady-teachers are all too scared, 

167 



The Next of Kin 

but I don't think they would be if they would 
only come, for we will chop the wood, and one 
of us will stay at night and sleep on the floor, 
and we will light the fires and get the breakfast, 
and we bring eggs and cream and everything 
like that, and we could give the teacher a cat 
and a dog; and the girl that had done the best 
work all week always got to scrub the floor 
when our last teacher was there; and we had a 
nice garden — and flowers, and now there Is not 
anything, and the small children are forgetting 
what Mr. Ellis taught them; for our school has 
been closed all last summer, and sometimes 
Peter and Ivan and the other little boys go over 
to the cabin and look in at the windows, and it 
is all so quiet and sad — they cry." 

There was a stricken silence In the room 
which Polly mistook for a lack of interest and 
redoubled her eff"orts. 

"We have twenty-four children altogether 
and they are all wanting a teacher to come. I 
came here to go to school, but if I can get a 
teacher to go back with me, I will go back. I 
thought I would try to learn quick and go back 

i68 



National Service — One Way- 
then, but when I saw all so many women able 
to read right off, and all looking so smart at 
learning, I thought I would ask you if one of 
you would please come. We give our teacher 
sixty-five dollars a month, and when you want to 
come home we will bring you to the station — 
it is only twenty miles — and the river is not 
deep only when it rains, and then even I know 
how to get through and not get in the holes; and 
if you will come we must go to-morrow, for the 
ice is getting rotten in the river and won't stand 
much sun." 

That was the appeal of the country to the 
city; of the foreign-born to the native-born; of 
the child to the woman. 

The first person to move was Miss Wheatly, 
who rose quietly and walked to the front of the 
room and faced the audience. "Madam Presi- 
dent," she began in her even voice, "I have 
been waiting quite a while for this, I think. I 
said to-day that if any one knew of a real, full- 
sized woman's job, I would like to be led to it. 
. . . Well — it seems that I have been led " 

She then turned to Polly and said, "I can 
169 



The Next of Kin 

read right off and am not afraid, not even of the 
river, if you promise to keep me out of the holes, 
and I beheve I can find enough of a diploma to 
satisfy the department, and as you have heard 
the river won't stand much sun, so you will 
kindly notice that my address has changed to 
Abilene Valley Post-Office." 

Polly held her firmly by the hand and they 
moved toward the door. Polly turned just as 
they were passing through the door and made 
her quaint and graceful curtsy, saying, "I am 
glad I came, and I guess we will be for going 
now." 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ORPHAN 

Just a little white-faced lad 

Sitting on the "Shelter" floor; 
Eyes which seemed so big and sad, 

Watched me as I passed the door. 
Turning back, I tried to win 

From that sober face a smile 
With some foolish, trifling thing, 

Such as children's hearts beguile. 

But the look which shot me through 

Said as plain as speech could be: 
"Life has been all right for you! 

But it is no joke for me! 
I 'm not big enough to know — 

And I wonder, wonder why 
My dear 'Daddy' had to go 

And my mother had to die! 

"You've a father, I suppose? 

And a mother — maybe — too? 
You can laugh and joke at life? 

It has been all right for you? 
Spin your top, and wave your fan! 

You've a home and folks who care 
Laugh about it those who can! 

Joke about it — those who dare 
— But excuse me — if I'm glum 
I can't bluff' it off — Hke some! " 

Then I sadly came away 
And felt guilty, all the day! 

Dr. Frederick Winters was a great be- 
liever in personal liberty for every one — ex- 

171 



The Next of Kin 

-cept, of course, the members of his own family. 
For them he craved every good thing except 
this. He was kind, thoughtful, courteous, and 
generous — a beneficent despot. 

There is much to be said in favor of despotic 
government after all. It is so easy of operation; 
it is so simple and direct — one brain, one will, 
one law, with no foolish back-talk, bickerings, 
murmurings, mutinies, letters to the paper. A 
democracy has it beaten, of course, on the basis 
of liberty, but there is much to be said in favor 
of an autocracy in the matter of efficiency. 

"King Asa did that which was right in the 
sight of the Lord " ; and in his reign the people 
were happy and contented and had no political 
diiferences. There being only one party, the 
"Asaites," there were no partisan newspapers, 
no divided homes, no mixed marriages, as we 
have to-day when Liberals and Conservatives, 
disregarding the command to be not unequally 
yoked together, marry. All these distressing 
circumstances were eliminated in good King 
Asa's reign. 

It is always a mistake to pursue a theory too 
172 



The Orphan 

far. When we turn the next page of the sacrec 
story we read that King Omri, with the same 
powers as King Asa had had, turned them tc 
evil account and oppressed the people in many 
ways and got himself terribly disliked. Despot- 
ism seems to work well or ill according to the 
despot, and so, as a form of government, it has 
steadily declined in favor. 

Despotic measures have thriven better in 
homes than in states. Homes are guarded by a 
wall of privacy, a delicate distaste for publicity, 
a shrinking from all notoriety such as rebellion 
must Inevitably bring, and for this reason the 
weaker ones often practice a peace-at-any-price 
policy, thinking of the alert eyes that may be 
peering through the filet lace of the window 
across the street. 

Mrs. Winters submitted to the despotic rule 
of Dr. Winters for no such reason as this. She 
submitted because she liked It, and because she 
did not know that It was despotic. It saved her 
the exertion of making decisions for herself, and 
her conscience was always quite clear. "The 
Doctor will not let me," she had told the 

173 



The Next of Kin 

women when they had asked her to play for the 
Sunday services at the mission. "The Doctor 
thought It was too cold for me to go out," had 
been her explanation when on one occasion she 
had failed to appear at a concert where she had 
promised to play the accompaniments; and In 
time people ceased to ask her to do anything, 
her promises were so likely to be broken. 

When the Suffrage agitators went to see her 
and tried to show her that she needed a vote, 
she answered all their arguments by saying, 
"I have such a good husband that these argu- 
ments do not apply to me at all"; and all their 
talk about spiritual Independence and personal 
responsibility fell on very pretty, but very deaf, 
ears. The women said she was a hopeless case. 

"I wonder," said one of the women after- 
wards In discussing her, "when Mrs. Winters 
presents herself at the heavenly gate and there 
Is asked what she has done to make the world 
better, and when she has to confess that she has 
never done anything outside of her own house, 
and nothing there except agreeable things, such 
as entertaining friends who next week will enter- 

174 



The Orphan 

tain her, and embroidering * insets' for corset- 
covers for dainty ladies who already have cor- 
set-covers enough to fill a store-window, — I 
wonder if she will be able to put it over on the 
heavenly doorkeeper that *the Doctor would 
not let her.' If all I hear is true. Saint Peter 
will say, 'Who is this person you call the Doc- 
tor?' and when she explains that the Doctor 
was her husband. Saint Peter will say, 'Sorry, 
lady, we cannot recognize marriage relations 
here at all — it is unconstitutional, you know 
— there is no marrying or giving in marriage 
after you cross the Celestial Meridian. I turned 
back a woman this morning who handed in the 
same excuse — there seems to have been a good 
deal of this business of one person's doing the 
thinking for another on earth, but we can't 
stand for it here. I'm sorry, lady, but I can't 
let you in — it would be as much as my job is 
worth.'" 

Upon this happy household, as upon some 
others not so happy, came the war! — and Dr. 
Winters's heroic soul responded to the trum- 
pet's call. He was among the first to present 

175 



The Next of Kin 

himself for active service in the Overseas Force. 
When he came home and told his wife, she 
got the first shock of her life. It was right, of 
course, it must be right, but he should have told 
her, and she remonstrated with him for the first 
time in her life. Why had he not consulted her, 
she asked, before taking such a vital step ^ Then 
Dr. Winters expressed in words one of the un- 
derlying principles of his life. "A man's first 
duty is to his country and his God," he said, 
"and even if you had objected, it would not 
have changed my decision." 

Mrs. Winters looked at him in surprise. "But, 
Frederick," she cried, "I have never had any 
authority but you. I have broken promises 
when you told me to, disappointed people, dis- 
appointed myself, but never complained — 
thinking in a vague way that you would do 
the same for me if I asked you to — your word 
was my law. What would you think if I volun- 
teered for a nurse without asking you — and 
then told you my country's voice sounded 
clear and plain above all others.?" 

"It is altogether different, "he said brusquely. 
176 



The Orphan 

"The country's business concerns men, not 
women. Woman's place Is to look after the 
homes of the nation and rear children. Men are 
concerned with the big things of life." 

Mrs. Winters looked at him with a new 
expression on her face. " I have fallen down, 
then," she said, "on one part of my job — I 
have brought into the world and cared for 
no children. All my life — and I am now 
forty years of age — has been given to mak- 
ing a home pleasant for one man. I have been 
a housekeeper and companion for one person. 
It does n't look exactly like a grown woman's 
whole life-work, now, does it.^*" 

"Don't talk foolishly, Nettie," he said; "you 



suit me." 



"That's it," she said quickly; "I suit you — 
but I do not suit the church women, the Civic 
Club women, the Hospital Aid women, the 
Children's Shelter women; they call me a 
slacker, and I am beginning to think I am." 

"I would like to know what they have to do 
with It.^" he said hotly; "you are my wife and I 
am the person concerned." 

177 



The Next of Kin 

Without noticing what he said, she contin- 
ued: "Once I wanted to adopt a baby, you re- 
member, when one of your patients died, and I 
would have loved to do it; but you said you 
must not be disturbed at night and I submitted. 
Still, if it had been our own, you would have had 
to be disturbed and put up with it like other 
people, and so I let you rule me. I have never 
had any opinion of my own." 

"Nettie, you are excited," he said gently; 
"you are upset, poor girl, about my going away 
— I don't wonder. Come out with me; I am 
going to speak at a recruiting meeting." 

Her first impulse was to refuse, for there were 
many things she wanted to think out, but the 
habit of years was on her and she went. 

The meeting was a great success. It was the 
first days of the war, when enthusiasm seethed 
and the little town throbbed with excitement. 
The news was coming through of the destruc- 
tion and violation of Belgium; the women wept 
and men's faces grew white with rage. 

Dr. Winters's fine face was alight with en- 
thusiasm as he spoke of the debt that every 

178 



The Orphan 

man now owes to his country. Every man who 
is able to hold a gun, he said, must come to the 
help of civilization against barbarism. These 
dreadful outrages are happening thousands of 
miles away, but that makes them none the less 
real. Humanity is being attacked by a bully, a 
ruffian, — how can any man stay at home f Let 
no consideration of family life keep you from 
doing your duty. Every human being must give 
an account of himself to God. What did you do 
in the great day of testing? will be the question 
asked you in that great day of reckoning to 
which we are all coming. 

When he was through speaking, amid the 
thunderous applause, five young men walked 
down to the front and signified their intention 
of going. 

"Why, that's Willie Shepherd, and he Is his 
mother's only support," whispered one of the 
women; "I don't think he should go." 

When they went home that night Mrs. Win- 
ters told the Doctor what she had heard the 
women say, and even added her remonstrance 
too. 

179 



The Next of Kin 

"This is no time for remonstrance," he had 
cried; "his mother will get along; the Patriotic 
Fund will look after her. I tell you human 
relationships are forgotten in this struggle! We 
must save our country. One broken heart more 
or less cannot be taken into consideration. 
Personal comfort must not be thought of. 
There is only one limit to service and sacrifice, 
and that is capacity." 

Every night after that he addressed meet- 
ings, and every night recruits came to the col- 
ors. His speeches vibrated with the spirit of 
sacrifice and the glory of service, and thrilled 
every heart that listened, and no heart was 
more touched than that of his wife, who felt 
that no future in the world would be so happy 
as to go and care for the wounded men. 

She made the suggestion one night, and was 
quite surprised to find that the Doctor regarded 
it favorably. All that night she lay awake from 
sheer joy: at last she was going to be of serv- 
ice — she was going to do something. She tried 
to tell herself of the hardships of the life, but 
nothing could dim her enthusiasm. "I hope 

i8o 



The Orphan 

It will be hard," she cried happily. "I want It 
hard to make up for the easy, Idle years I have 
spent. I hate the ease and comfort and selfish- 
ness In which I have lived." 

The next day her application went In and she 
began to attend the ambulance classes which 
were given in the little city by the doctors and 
nurses. 

The Doctor was away so much that she was 
practically free to go and come as she liked, 
and the breath of liberty was sweet to her. 
She also saw, with further pangs of conscience, 
the sacrifices which other women were making. 
The Red Cross women seemed to work un- 
ceasingly. 

The President of the Red Cross came to her 
office every morning at nine, and stayed till five. 

"What about lunch?" Mrs. Winters asked 
her, one day. "Do you go home.''" 

"Oh, no," said the other woman; "I go out 
and get a sandwich." 

"But I mean — what about your husband's 
lunch.?" 

"He goes home," the president said, "and 
i8i 



The Next of Kin 

sees after the children when they come in 
from school — of course I have a maid, you 
know." 

"But doesn't he miss you dreadfully?" 
asked Mrs. Winters. 

"Yes, I think he does, but not any more than 
the poor fellows in the trenches miss their wives. 
He is not able to go to the front himself and he 
is only too glad to leave me free to do all I can." 

"But surely some other woman could be 
found," said Mrs. Winters, "who has n't got as 
many family cares as you have." 

"They could," said the president, "but they 
would probably tell you that their husbands 
like to have them at home — or some day 
would be stormy and they would 'phone down 
that 'Teddy' positively refused to let them 
come out. We have been busy people all our 
lives and have been accustomed to sacrifice and 
never feel a bit sorry for it — we've raised our 
six children and done without many things. It 
does n't hurt us as it does the people who have 
always sat on cushioned seats. The Red Cross 
Society knows that it is a busy woman who can 

182 



The Orphan 

always find time to do a little more, and I am 
just as happy as can be doing this." 

Mrs. Winters felt the unintentional rebuke 
in these words, and turned them over in her 
mind. 

One day, three months after this, the Doctor 
told her that it was quite probable he would 
not be going overseas at all, for he was having 
such success recruiting that the major-general 
thought it advisable to have him go right on 
with it. "And so, Nettie," he said, "you had 
better cancel your application to go overseas, 
for of course, if I do not go, you will not." 

For a moment she did not grasp what he 
meant. He spoke of it so casually. Not go! 
The thought of her present life of inactivity 
was never so repulsive. But silence fell upon 
her and she made no reply. 

"We will not know definitely about it for a 
few weeks," he said, and went on reading. 

After that, Mrs. Winters attended every re- 
cruiting meeting at which her husband spoke, 
eagerly memorizing his words, hardly knowing 
why, but she felt that she might need them. 

183 



The Next of Kin 

She had never been able to argue with any one 
— one adverse criticism of her position always 
caused her defense to collapse. So she collected 
all the material she could get on the subject 
of personal responsibility and sacrifice. Her 
husband's brilliant way of phrasing became 
a delight to her. But always, as she listened, 
vague doubts arose In her mind. 

One day when she was sewing at the Red 
Cross rooms, the women were talking of a sad 
case that had occurred at the hospital. A sol- 
dier's wife had died, leaving a baby two weeks 
old and another little girl of four, who had been 
taken to the Children's Shelter, and who had 
cried so hard to be left with her mother. One of 
the women had been to see the sick woman the 
day before she died, and was telling the others 
about her. 

"A dear little saint on earth she was — well 
bred, well educated, but without friends. Her 
only anxiety was for her children and sympa- 
thy for her husband. *ThIs will be sad news for 
poor Bob,' she said, *but he'll know I did my 
best to live — I cannot get my breath — that's 

184 



The Orphan 

the worst — if I could only get my breath — I 
would abide the pain some way.' The baby is 
lovely, too, — a fine healthy boy. Now I won- 
der if there is any woman patriotic enough to 
adopt those two little ones whose mother is 
dead and whose father is in the trenches. The 
baby went to the Shelter yesterday." 

"Of course they are well treated there," said 
Mrs. Winters. 

"Well treated!" cried the president — "they 
are fed and kept warm and given all the care 
the matron and attendants can give them; but 
how can two or three women attend to twenty- 
five children .f* They do all they can, but it's a 
sad place just the same. I always cry when I see 
the mother-hungry look on their faces. They 
want to be owned and loved — they need some 
one belonging to them. Don't you know that 
settled look of loneliness.^ I call it the * Institu- 
tional face,' and I know it the minute I see It. 
Poor Bob Wilson — it will be sad news for him 
— he was our plumber and gave up a good job 
to go. At the station he kept saying to his wife 
to comfort her, for she was crying her heart 

185 



The Next of Kin 

out, poor girl, * Don't cry, Minnie dear, I'm 
leaving you in good hands; they are not Hke 
strangers anymore, all these kind ladies; they'll 
see you through. Don't you remember what 
the Doctor said,' — that was your husband, 
Mrs. Winters, — 'the women are the best sol- 
diers of all — so you '11 bear up, Minnie.' 

"Minnie was a good soldier right enough," 
said the president, "but I wonder what Bob will 
think of the rest of us when he comes home — 
or does n't come home. We let his Minnie die, 
and sent his two babies to the Children's Shel- 
ter. In this manner have we discharged our 
duty — we've taken it easy so far." 

Mrs. Winters sat open-eyed, and as soon as 
she could, left the room. She went at once to 
the Shelter and asked to see the children. 

Up the bare stairs, freshly scrubbed, she was 
taken, and Into the day-nursery where many 
children sat on the floor, some idly playing with 
half-broken toys, one or two wailing softly, not 
as if they were looking for immediate returns, 
but just as a small protest against things in 
general. The little four-year-old girl, neatly 

i86 



The Orphan 

dressed and smiling, came at once when the 
matron called her, and quickly said, "Will you 
take me to my mother? Am I going home 
now?" 

"She asks every one that," the matron said 
aside. 

"I have a little brother now," said the child 
proudly; "just down from heaven — we knew 
he was coming." 

In one of the white cribs the little brother lay, 
in an embroidered quilt. The matron uncov- 
ered his face, and, opening one navy-blue eye, 
he smiled. 

"He's a bonnle boy," the matron said; "he 
has slept ever since he came. But I cannot tell 
— somebody — I simply can't." 

Mrs. Winters went home thinking so hard 
that she was afraid her husband would see the 
thoughts shining out, tell-tale, in her face. 

She told him where she had been and was 
just leading up to the appeal which she had 
prepared, for the children, when a young man 
called to see the Doctor. 

The young fellow had called for advice: his 
187 



The Next of Kin 

wife would not give her consent to his enhsting, 
and his heart was wrung with anxiety over 
what he should do. 

The Doctor did not hesitate a minute. "Go 
right on," he said; "this is no time to let any 
one, however near and dear, turn us from our 
duty. We have ceased to exist as individuals — 
now we are a Nation and we must sacrifice the 
individual for the State. Your wife will come 
around to it and be glad that you were strong 
enough to do your duty. No person has any 
right to turn another from his duty, for we 
must all answer to Almighty God in this crisis, 
not to each other." 

The next day, while the Doctor was away 
making a recruiting speech in another town, 
the delivery van of the leading furniture store 
stood at his back door and one high chair stood 
in it, one white crib was being put up-stairs in 
his wife's bedroom, and many foreign articles 
were in evidence in the room. The Swedish 
maid was all excitement and moved around on 
tip-toe, talking in a whisper. 

"There ban coming a baby hare, and a liT 
i88 



The Orphan 

girl. Gee! what will the Doctor man say! He 
ban quick enough to bring them other houses, 
no want none for self — oh, gee!" 

Then she made sure that the key was not in 
the study door, for Olga was a student of hu- 
man nature and wanted to get her information 
first-hand. 

When the Doctor came in late that night, 
Mrs. Winters met him at the door as usual. So 
absorbed was he in telling her of the success of 
his meetings that he did not notice the excite- 
ment in her face. 

"They came to-night in droves, Nettie," he 
said, as he drank the cocoa she had made for 
him. 

"They can't help it, Fred," she declared 
enthusiastically, "when you put it to them the 
way you do. You are right, dear; it is not a 
time for any person to hold others back from 
doing what they see they should. It's a per- 
sonal matter between us and God — we are not 
individuals any more — we are a state, and each 
man and woman must get under the burden. I 

189 



The Next of Kin 

hate this talk of 'business as usual' — I tell you 
it is nothing as usual." 

He regarded her with surprise! Nettle had 
never made so long a speech before. 

"It's your speeches, Fred; they are wonderful. 
Why, man alive, you have put backbone even 
into me — I who have been a jelly-fish all 
my life — and last night, when I heard you 
explain to that young fellow that he must not 
let his wife be his conscience, I got a sudden 
glimpse of things. You've been my conscience 
all my life, but, thank God, you 've led me out 
into a clear place. I 'm part of the State, and 
I am no slacker — I am going to do my bit. 
Come, Fred, I want to show you something." 

He followed her without a word as she led the 
way to the room upstairs where two children 
slept sweetly. 

"They are mine, Fred, — mine until the war 
is over, at least, and Private Wilson comes 
back; and if he does not come back, or if he 
will let me have them, they are mine forever." 

He stared at this new woman, who looked 
like his wife. 

190 



The Orphan 

"It was your last speech, Fred, — what you 
said to that young man. You told him to go 
ahead — his wife would come around, you said 
— she would see her selfishness. Then I saw a 
light shine on my pathway. Every speech has 
stiffened my backbone a little. I was like the 
mouse who timidly tiptoed out to the saucer of 
brandy, and, taking a sip, went more boldly 
back, then came again with considerable swag- 
ger; and at last took a good drink and then 
strutted up and down saying, 'Bring on your old 
black cat!' That's how I feel, Fred, — I'm 
going to be a mother to these two little children 
whose own mother has passed on and whose 
father is holding up the pillars of the Empire. 
It would hardly be fair to leave them to public 
charity, now, would it?" 

"Well, Nettie," the Doctor said slowly, "I'll 
see that you do not attend any more recruit- 
ing meetings — you are too literal. But all 
the same," he said, "I am proud of my con- 
vert." 

Olga Jasonjusen tiptoed gently away from 
the door, and going down the back stairs hugged 

191 



The Next of Kin 

herself gayly, saying, "All over — but the kiss- 
ing. Oh, gee! He ain't too bad! He's just 
needed some one to cheek up to him. Bet 
she's sorry now she did n't sass him long 
ago." 



CHAPTER XII 

THE WAR-MOTHER 

I SAW my old train friend again. It was the 
day that one of our regiments went away, and 
we were all at the station to bid the boys good- 
bye. 

The empty coaches stood on a siding, and the 
stream of khaki-clad men wound across the 
common from the Fair buildings, which were 
then used as a military camp. The men were 
heavily loaded with all their equipment, but 
cheerful as ever. The long-looked-for order to 
go forward had come at last! 

Men in uniform look much the same, but the 
women who came with them and stood by them 
were from every station in life. There were two 
Ukrainian women, with colored shawls on their 
heads, who said good-bye to two of the best- 
looking boys in the regiment, their sons. It is 
no new thing for the Ukrainian people to fight 
for liberty ! There were heavily veiled women, 

193 



The Next of Kin 

who alighted from their motors and silently 
watched the coaches filling with soldiers. Every 
word had been said, every farewell spoken; 
they were not the sort who say tempestuous 
good-byes, but their silence was like the silence 
of the open grave. There were many sad-faced 
women, wheeling go-carts, with children hold- 
ing to their skirts crying loudly for "Daddy." 
There were tired, untidy women, overrun by 
circumstances, with that look about them 
which the Scotch call "through-other." There 
were many brave little boys and girls standing 
by their mothers, trying hard not to cry; there 
were many babies held up to the car-window 
to kiss a big brother or a father; there were the 
groups of chattering young people, with their 
boxes of candy and incessant fun; there were 
brides of a day, with their white-fox furs and 
new suits, and the great new sorrow in their 
eyes. 

One fine-looking young giant made his way 
toward the train without speaking to any one, 
passing where a woman held her husband's 
hands, crying hysterically — we were trying to 

194 



The War-Mother 

persuade her to let him go, for the conductor 
had given the first warning. 

" I have no one to cry over me, thank God ! " 
he said, "and I think I am the best off." But 
the bitterness in his tone beUed his words. 

"Then maybe I could pretend that you are 
my boy," said a woman's voice behind me, 
which sounded familiar; "you see I have no 
boy — now, and nobody to write to — and I 
just came down to-night to see if I could find 
one. I want to have some one belonging to me 
— even if they are going away!" 

The young man laid down his bag and took 
her hand awkwardly. "I sure would be glad to 
oblige you," he said, "only I guess you could 
get one that was lots nicer. I am just a sort of 
a bo-hunk from the North Country." 
y "You'll do me," said the old lady, whom I 
recognized at once as my former train compan- 
ion, — "you '11 do me fine. Tell me your name 
and number, and I '11 be your war-mother, — 
here's my card, I have It all ready, — I knew 
I 'd get some one. Now, remember, I am your 
Next of Kin. Give In my name and I '11 get the 

195 



The Next of Kin 

cable when you get the D.S.O., and I'll write 
to you even^ week and send you things. I just 
can't keep from sending parcels." 

"Gee! This is sudden!" said the boy, laugh- 
ing; "but it's nice!" 

"I lost my boys just as suddenly as this," she 
said. "Billy and Tom went out together — 
they were killed at Saint-Eloi, but Frank came 
through it all to Vimy Ridge. Then the mes- 
sage came . . . sudden too. One day I had him 
— then I lost him! Why should n't nice things 
come suddenly too — just like this!" 

"You sure can have me — mother," the big 
fellow said. 

The conductor was giving the last call. Then 
the boy took her in his arms and kissed her 
withered cheek, which took on a happy glow 
that made us all look the other way. 

She and I stood together and watched the 
grinding wheels as they began to move. The 
spirit of youth, the Indomitable, imperishable 
spirit of youth was in her eyes, and glowed 
in her withered face as she murmured hapn 
plly, — 

196 



The War-Mother 

"I am one of the Next of Kin . . . again, and 
my new boy is on that train." 

We stood together until the train had gone 
from our sight. 

"Let me see," I said, "how many chickens 
did you tell me that Biddy hen of yours had 
when the winter came.^" 

"Twenty- two," she laughed. 

"Well,"'l said, "it's early yet." 

"I just can't help it," she said seriously; "I 
have to be in it! After I got the word about my 
last boy, it seemed for a few days that I had 
come to the end of everything. I slept and 
slept and slept, just like you do when you've 
had company at your house, — the very nicest 
company, and they go away! — and you're so 
lonely and idle, and tired, too, for you 've been 
having such a good time you did not notice that 
you were getting near the edge. That's how I 
felt; but after a week I wanted to be working 
at something. I thought maybe the Lord had 
left my hands quite free so I could help some 
one else. . . . You have played croquet, have n't 
you } You know how the first person who gets 

197 



The Next of Kin 

out has the privilege of coming back a ' rover,' 
and giving a hand to any one. That's what I 
felt; I was a 'rover,' and you'd be surprised at 
all I have found to do. There arc so many sol- 
diers' wives with children who never get down- 
town to shop or see a play, without their chil- 
dren. I have lots to do in that line, and it keeps 
me from thinking. 

" I want you to come with me now," she went 
on, " to see a woman who has something wrong 
with her that I can't find out. She has a sore 
thought. Her man has been missing since Sep- 
tember, and Is now officially reported killed. 
But there's something else bothering her." 

"How do you know.^" I asked. 

She turned quickly toward me and said, 
"Have you any children.'*" 

"Five," I said. 

"Oh, well, then, you'll understand. Can't 
you tell by a child's cry whether it is hungry, 
or hurt, or just mad.f"' 

"I can, I think," I said. 

"Well, that's how I know. She's in deep 
grief over her husband, but there's more than 

198 



The War-Mother 

that. Her eyes have a hurt look that I wish 
I could get out of them. You '11 see it for your- 
self, and maybe we can get her to tell us. I just 
found her by accident last week — or at least, 
I found her; nothing happens by accident!" 

We found her in a little faded green house, 
whose veranda was broken through in many 
places. Scared-looking, dark-eyed children 
darted shyly through the open door as we ap- 
proached. In the darkened front room she re- 
ceived us, and, without any surprise, pleasure, 
or resentment in her voice, asked us to sit down. 
As our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, 
we wondered more and more why the sunshine 
was excluded, for there was no carpet to fade, 
nor any furniture which would have been in- 
jured. The most conspicuous object in the 
room was the framed family group taken just 
before " her man " went away. He was a hand- 
some young fellow in his tidy uniform, and the 
woman beside him had such a merry face that 
I should never have known her for the sad and 
faded person who had met us at the door. In 
the picture she was smiling, happy, resolute; 

199 



The Next of Kin 

now her face was limp and frazzled, and had an 
Indefinable challenge in it which baffled me. 
My old friend was right — there was a sore 
thought there! 

The bright black eyes of the handsome sol- 
dier fascinated me; he was so much alive; so 
fearless; so confident, so brave, — so much 
needed by these little ones who clustered around 
his knee. Again, as I looked upon this picture, 
the horrors of war rolled over my helpless heart. 

My old friend was trying hard to engage the 
woman in conversation, but her manner was 
abstracted and strange. I noticed her clothes 
were all black, even the flannel bandage around 
her throat — she was recovering from an attack 
of quinsy — was black too; and as if in answer 
to my thoughts, she said : — 

" It was red — but I dyed it — I could n't 
bear to have it red — it bothered me. That's 
why I keep the blinds down too — the sun 
hurts me — it has no right to shine — just the 
same as if nothing had happened." Her voice 
quivered with passion. 

"'Have you any neighbors, Mrs. C .f"' I 

209,. 



The War-Mother 

asked; for her manner made me uneasy — she 
had been too much alone. 

"Neighbors!" she stormed, — "neighbors! I 
have n't any, and I do not want them : they 
would only lie about me — the way they lied 
about Fred!" 

" Surely nobody ever lied about Fred," I said, 
— "this fine, brave fellow." 

"He does look brave, does n't he?" she cried. 
"You are a stranger, but you can see it, can't 
you f You would n't think he was a coward, 
would you.'"' 

"I would stake everything on his bravery!" 
I said honestly, looking at the picture. 

She came over and squeezed my hand. 

"It was a wicked lie — all a lie!" she said 
bitterly. 

"Tell us all about it," I said; "I am sure 
there has been a mistake." 

She went quickly out of the room, and my 
old friend and I stared at each other without 
speaking. In a few minutes she came back with a 
"paper" in her hand, and, handing it to me, she 
said, "Read that and you '11 see what they say!" 

201 



The Next of Kin 

I read the announcement which stated that 
her husband had been missing since September 
29, and was now believed to have been killed. 
"This Is just what is sent to every one — " I 
began, but she interrupted me. 

"Look here!" she cried, leaning over my 
shoulder and pointing to the two words "mar- 
ginally noted" — "What does that mean?" 

I read it over again : — 

"We regret to inform you that the soldier 
marginally noted, who has been declared miss- 
ing since September 29, is now believed to have 
been killed!" 

"There!" she cried, "can't you see?" point- 
ing again to the two words. "Don't you see 
what that means? — margin means the edge — 
and that means that Fred was noted for being 
always on the edge of the army, trying to es- 
cape, I suppose. But that's a lie, for Fred was 
not that kind, I tell you — he was no coward ! " 

I saw where the trouble lay, and tried to 
explain. She would not listen. 

"Oh, but I looked In the dictionary and I 
know: 'margin' means 'the edge,' and they are 



The War-Mother 

trying to say that Fred was always edging off — 
you see — noted for being on the edge, that 's 
what they say." 

We reasoned, we argued, we explained, but 
the poor little lonely soul was obsessed with the 
idea that a deep insult had been put upon her 
man's memory. 

Then my old friend had an idea. She opened 
her purse and brought out the notice which she 
had received of the death of her last boy. 

We put the two notices side by side, and told 
her that these were printed by the thousands, 
and every one got the same. Just the name had 
to be filled in. 

Then she saw it! 

"Oh!" she cried, "I am so glad you showed 
me this, for I have been so bitter. I hated every 
one; it sounded so hard and cold and horrible — 
as if nobody cared. It was harder than losing 
Fred to have him so insulted. But now I see it 
all!" 

"Isn't it too bad," said the old lady, as we 
walked home together, " that they do not have 
these things managed by women? Women 

203 



The Next of Kin 

would have sense enough to remember that 
these notices go to many classes of people — 
and would go a bit slow on the high-sounding 
phrases: they would say, 'The soldier whose 
name appears on the margin of this letter,' in- 
stead of 'The soldier who is marginally noted'; 
it might not be so concise, but it is a heap 
plainer. A few sentences of sympathy, too, and 
appreciation, written in by hand, would be a 
comfort. I tell you at a time like this we want 
something human, like the little girl who was 
put to bed in the dark and told that the angels 
would keep her company. She said she did n't 
want angels — she wanted something with a 
skin face! — So do we all! We are panicky and 
touchy, like a child that has been up too late 
the night before, and we have to be carefully 
handled. All the pores of our hearts are open 
and it is easy to get a chill!" 

As we rode home in the car she told me about 
the letter which had come that day from her 
last boy: — 

"It seemed queer to look at this letter and 
know that I would never get another one from 

204 



The War-Mother 

the boys. Letters from the boys have been a 
big thing to me for many years. Billy and Tom 
were away from me for a long time before the 
war, and they never failed to write. Frank was 
never away from me until he went over, and he 
was not much of a letter-writer, — just a few 
sentences! 'Plello, mother, how are you.? I'm 
O.K. Hope you are the same. Sleeping well, 
and eating everything I can lay my hands on. 
The box came; it was sure a good one. Come 
again. So-long!' That was the style of Frank's 
letter. 'I don't want this poor censor to be 
boring his eyes out trying to find state secrets 
in my letters,' he said another time, apologiz- 
ing for the shortness of it. 'There are lots of 
things that I would like to tell you, but I guess 
they will keep until I get home — I always 
could talk better than write.' , . . But this let- 
ter is different. He seemed to know that he 
was going — west, as they say, and he wrote so 
seriously; all the boyishness had gone from him, 
and he seemed to be old, much older than I am. 
These boys of ours are all older than we are 
now, — they have seen so much of life's sadness 

205 



The Next of Kin 

— they have got above it; they see so many 
of their companions go over that they get a 
gHmpse of the other shore. They are like very 
old people who cannot grieve the way younger 
people can at leaving this life." 

Then I read the boy's letter. 

"Dear Mother," it ran, "We are out resting 
now, but going in to-morrow to tackle the big- 
gest thing that we have pulled off yet. You '11 
hear about it, I guess. Certainly you will if we 
are successful. I hope that this letter will go 
safely, for I want you to know just how I feel, 
and that everything is fine with me. I used to 
be scared stiff that I would be scared, but I 
have n't been — there seems to be something 
that stands by you and keeps your heart up, 
and with death all around you, you see it is not 
so terrible. I have seen so many of the boys 
pass out, and they don't mind it. They fight 
like wild-cats while they can, but when their 
turn comes they go easy. The awful roar of the 
guns does it. The silent tomb had a horrible 
sound to me when I was at home, but it sounds 
like a welcome now. Anyway, mother, what- 

206 



The War-Mother 

ever happens you must not worry. Eveiything 
is all right when you get right up to it — even 
death. I just wish I could see you, and make 
you understand how light-hearted I feel. I 
never felt better; my only trouble is that you 
will be worried about me, but just remember 
that everything is fine, and that I love you. 

"Frank." 



AT THE LAST! 

God, who hears the smallest cry 
That ever rose from human soul, 

Be near my mother when she reads 
My name upon the Honor Roll; 

And when she sees it written there, 

Dear Lord, stand to, behind her chair ! 

Or, if it he Thy sacred will 

That I may go and stroke her handy 
Just let me say, "I'm living still! 

And in a brighter, better land.'* 
One word from me will cheer her so, 

Lord, if you will let me go! 

1 know her eyes with tears will blind, 
I think I hear her choking cry, 

When in the list my name she 'II find — 
Oh, let me — let me • — let me try 

To somehow make her understand 
That it is not so hard to die ! 

She's thinking of the thirst and pain; 

She's thinking of the saddest things; 
She does not know an angel came 

And led me to the water-springs. 
She does not know the quiet peace 

That fell upon my heart like rain, 
When something sounded my release. 

And something eased the scorching pain. 

208 



At the Last ! 

She does not know, I gladly went 
And am with Death, content, content. 

I want to say I played the game — 
/ played the game right to the end — 

/ did not shrink at shot or flame, 
But when at last the good old friend. 
That some call Death, came beckoning me, 
I went with him, quite willingly ! 
Just let me tell her — let her know — 
It really was not hard to go ! 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE BELIEVING CHURCH 

The gates of heaven are swinging open so 
often these days, as the brave ones pass In, 
that It would be a wonder If some gleams of 
celestial brightness did not come down to us. 

We get It unexpectedly In the roar of the 
street; In the quiet of the midnight; In the sun- 
spattered aisles of the forest; In the faces of 
our friends; In the turbid stream of our poor 
burdened humanity. They shine out and are 
gone — these flashes of eternal truth. The two 
worlds cannot be far apart when the travel 
from one to the other Is so heavy! No, I do not 
know what heaven Is like, but It could not seem 
strange to me, for I know so many people now 
who are there! Sometimes I feel like the old 
lady who went back to Ontario to visit, and 
who said she felt more at home In the cemetery 
than anywhere else, for that Is where most of 
her friends had gone! 

2IO 



The Believing Church 

These heavenly gleams have shown us new 
things in our civilization and in our social life, 
and most of all in our own hearts. Above all 
other lessons we have learned, or will learn, is 
the fallacy of hatred. Hatred weakens, destroys, 
disintegrates, scatters. The world's disease to- 
day Is the withering, blighting, wasting mal- 
ady of hatred, which has Its roots in the narrow 
patriotism which teaches people to love their 
own country and despise all others. The superi- 
ority bug which enters the brain and teaches a 
nation that they are God's chosen people, and 
that all other nations must some day bow In 
obeisance to them, is the microbe which has 
poisoned the world. We must love our own 
country best, of course, just as we love our own 
children best; but It Is a poor mother who does 
not desire the highest good for every other 
woman's child. 

We are sick unto death of hatred, force, bru- 
tality; blood-letting will never bring about last- 
ing results, for It automatically plants a crop of 
bitterness and a desire for revenge which start 
the trouble all over again. To kill a man does 

211 



The Next of Kin 

not prove that he was wrong, neither does It 
make converts of his friends. A returned man 
told me about hearing a lark sing one morning 
as the sun rose over the shell-scarred, deso- 
lated battlefield, with Its smouldering piles of 
ruins which had once been human dwelling- 
places, and broken, splintered trees which the 
day before had been green and growing. Over 
this scene of horror, hatred, and death arose 
the lark into the morning air, and sang his glo- 
rious song. "And then," said the boy, as he 
steadied himself on his crutches, "he sang the 
very same song over again, just to show us that 
he could do it again and meant every word of 
it, and It gave me a queer feeling. It seemed 
to show me that the lark had the straight of it, 
and we were all wrong. But," he added, after 
a pause, "nobody knows how wrong it all Is 
like the men who've been there!" 

Of course we know that the world did not 
suddenly go wrong. Its thought must have 
been wrong all the time, and the war Is simply 
the manifestation of It; one of them at least. 
But how did it happen.** That is the question 

212 



The Believing Church 

which weary hearts are asking all over the world. 
We all know what is wrong with Germany. 
That 's easy. It is always easier to diagnose other 
people's cases than our own — and pleasanter. 
We know that the people of Germany have 
been led away by their teachers, philosophers, 
writers; they worship the god of force; they 
recognize no sin but weakness and inefficiency. 
They are good people, only for their own way of 
thinking ; no doubt they say the same thing of us. 
Wrong thinking has caused all our trouble, 
and the world cannot be saved by physical 
means, but only by the spiritual forces which 
change the mental attitude. When the sword 
shall be beaten into the ploughshare and the 
spear into the pruning-hook, that will be the 
outward sign of the change of thought from 
destructive, competitive methods to construc- 
tive and cooperative regeneration of the world ! 
It is interesting to note that the sword and 
spear are not going to be thrown on the scrap- 
heap ; they are to be transformed — made over. 
All energy Is good; it is only its direction, 
which may become evil. 

213 



The Next of Kin 

It is not to be wondered at that the world 
has run to bhnd hatred when we stop to reahze 
that the Church has failed to teach the peace- 
able fruits of the spirit, and has preferred to 
fight human beings rather than prejudice, 
ignorance, and sin, and has too often gauged 
success by competition between its various 
branches, rather than by cooperation against 
the powers of evil. 

At a recent convention of a certain religious 
body, one sister, who gave in her report as to 
how the Lord had dealt with the children of men 
in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the 
hardness of the sinners' hearts, their proneness 
to err, and the worldliness of even professing 
Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given 
over to the love of pleasure. She told also of 
the niggardly contributions; the small congre- 
gations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging 
tale that she unfolded. Only once did she show 
any enthusiasm, and that was in her closing 
words: "But I thank my Lord and Heavenly 
Master that the other church in our town ain't 
done no better!" 

214 



The Believing Church 

The Church Is our oldest and best organiza- 
tion. It has enough energy, enough driving 
force, to better conditions for all if it could 
be properly applied; but being an exceedingly 
respectable Institution it has been rather shy 
of changes, and so has found It hard to adapt 
itself to new conditions. It has clung to shad- 
ows after the substance has departed; and even 
holds to the old phraseology which belongs to 
a day long dead. Stately and beautiful and 
meaningful phrases they were, too. In their day, 
but now their fires are dead, their lights are 
out, their "punch" has departed. They are as 
pale and sickly as the red lanterns set to guard 
the spots of danger on the street at night and 
carelessly left burning all the next day. 

Every decade sees the people's problems 
change, but the Church goes on with Balaam 
and Balak, with King Ahasuerus, and the two 
she-bears that came out of the woods. I shudder 
when I think of how much time has been spent 
In showing how Canaan was divided, and how 
little time is spent on showing how the Domin- 
ion of Canada should be divided; of how much 

215 



The Next of Kin 

time has been given to the man born blind, 
and how Httle to a consideration of the causes 
and prevention of that bUndness; of the time 
spent on our Lord's miraculous feeding of the 
five thousand, and how little time is spent on 
trying to find out his plans for feeding the 
hungry ones of to-day, who, we are bold to 
believe, are just as precious in his sight. 

The human way is to shelve responsibility. 
The disciples came to Christ when the afternoon 
began to grow into evening, and said, "These 
people have n't anything to eat, send them 
away!" This is the human attitude toward 
responsibility; that is why many a beggar gets 
a quarter — and is told to "beat it"! In this 
manner are we able to side-step responsibility. 
To-day's problems are apt to lead to difficulties; 
it is safer to discuss problems of long ago than 
of the present; for the present ones concern real 
people, and they may not like it. Hush! Don't 
offend Deacon Bones; stick to Balaam — he's 
dead. 

In some respects the Church resembles a coal 
furnace that has been burning quite a while 

216 



The Believing Church 

without being cleaned out. There form In the 
bottom certain hard substances which give off 
neither Hght nor heat, nor allow a free current 
of air to pass through. These hard substances 
are called "clinkers." Once they were good 
pieces of burning coal, Igniting the coal around 
them, but now their fire Is dead, their heat Is 
spent, and they must be removed for the good 
of the furnace. Something like this has hap- 
pened In the Church. It has a heavy percent- 
age of human "clinkers," sometimes in the 
front pews, sometimes in the pulpit. They were 
good people once, too, possessed of spiritual 
life and capable of inspiring those around them. 
But spiritual experiences cannot be warmed 
over — they must be new every day. That is 
what Saint Paul meant when he said that the 
outer man decays, but the inner man is re- 
newed. An old experience In religion is of no 
more value than a last year's bird's nest! You 
cannot feed the hungry with last year's pot- 
pies! 

This is the day of opportunity for the 
Church, for the people are asking to be led! 

217 



The Next of Kin 

It will have to realize that religion Is a "here 
and now" experience, Intended to help people 
with their human worries to-day, rather than 
an elaborate system of golden streets, big pro- 
cessions, walls of jasper, and endless years of 
listless loafing on the shores of the River of 
Life! The Church has directed too much energy 
to the business of showing people how to die 
and teaching them to save their souls, forget- 
ting that one of these carefully saved souls is 
after all not worth much. Christ said, "He 
that saveth his life shall lose It!" and "He that 
loseth his life for my sake shall find It!" The 
soul can be saved only by self-forgetfulness. 
The monastery Idea of retirement from the 
world in order that one may be sure of heaven 
Is not a courageous way of meeting life's diffi- 
culties. But this plan of escape has been very 
popular even In Protestant churches, as shown 
In our hymnology: "Why do we linger?" "We 
are but strangers here "; "Father, dear Father, 
take Thy children home"; "Earth Is a wilder- 
ness, heaven Is my home"; "I'm a pilgrim 
and a stranger"; "I am only waiting here to 

2I§ 



The Believing Church 

hear the summons, child, come home." These 
are some of the hymns with which we have 
beguiled our weary days of waiting; and yet, for 
all this boasted desire to be "up and away," 
the very people who sang these hymns have not 
the slightest desire to leave the "wilderness." 

The Church must renounce the idea that, 
when a man goes forth to preach the Gospel, 
he has to consider himself a sort of glorified 
immigration agent, whose message is, "This 
way, ladies and gentlemen, to a better, brighter, 
happier world; earth is a poor place to stick 
around, heaven is your home." His mission Is 
to teach his people to make of this world a bet- 
ter place — to live their lives here In such a 
way that other men and women will find life 
sweeter for their having lived. Incidentally we 
win heaven, but it must be a result, not an 
objective. 

We know there is a future state, there is a 
land where the complications of this present 
world will be squared away. Some call it a 
Day of Judgment; I like best to think of It as a 
day of explanations. I want to hear God's side. 

219 



The Next of Kin 

Also I know we shall not have to lie weary cen- 
turies waiting for it. When the black curtain 
of death falls on life's troubled scenes, there will 
appear on it these words in letters of gold, 
"End of Part I. Part II will follow immedi- 
ately." 

I know that I shall have a sweet and beauti- 
ful temper in heaven, where there will be 
nothing to try it, no worries, misunderstand- 
ings, elections, long and tedious telephone con- 
versations; people who insist on selling me a 
dustless mop when I am hot on the trail of an 
idea. There will be none of that, so that it will 
not be difficult to keep sweet and serene. I 
would not thank any one to hand me a sword 
and shield when the battle is over; I want 
it now while the battle rages; I claim my full 
equipment now, not on merit, but on need. 

Everything in life encourages me to believe 
that God has provided a full equipment for us 
here in life if we will only take it. He would not 
store up every good thing for the future and let 
us go short here. 

In a prosperous district in Ontario there 
220 



The Believing Church 

stands a beautiful brick house, where a large 
family of children lived long ago. The parents 
worked early and late, grubbing and saving 
and putting money in the bank. Sometimes the 
children resented the hard life which they led, 
and wished for picnics, holidays, new clothes, 
ice-cream, and the other fascinating things of 
childhood. Some of the more ambitious ones 
even craved a higher education, but they were 
always met by the same answer when the re- 
quest involved the expenditure of money. The 
answer was: "It will all be yours some day. 
Now, don't worry; just let us work together 
and save all we can; it's all for you children 
and it will all be yours some day. You can do 
what you like with it when we are dead and 
gone!" I suppose the children in their heart of 
hearts said, "Lord haste the day!" 

The parents passed on in the fullness of time. 
Some of the children went before them. Those 
who were left fell heir to the big house and the 
beautiful grounds, but they were mature men 
and women then, and they had lost the art of 
enjoyment. The habit of saving and grubbing 

221 



The Next of Kin 

was upon them, and their aspirations for better 
things had long ago died out. Everything had 
been saved for the future, and now, when it 
came, they found out that It was all too late. 
The time for learning and enjoyment had gone 
by. A few dollars spent on them when they 
were young would have done so much. 

If that is a poor policy for earthly parents 
to follow, I believe it is not a good line for a 
Heavenly Parent to take. 

We need an equipment for this present life 
which will hold us steady even when everything 
around us is disturbed; that will make us desire 
the good of every one, even those who are in- 
tent upon doing us evil; that will transform the 
humblest and most disagreeable task into one 
of real pleasure; that will enable us to see that 
we have set too high a value on the safety of 
life and property and too trifling an estimate 
on spiritual things; that will give us a proper 
estimate of our own importance In the general 
scheme of things, so that we will not think we 
are a worm in the dust, nor yet mistake our- 
selves for the President of the Company! 

222 



The Believing Church 

The work of the Church is to teach these 
ethical values to the people. It must begin by 
teaching us to have more faith in each other, 
and more coordination. We cannot live a day 
without each other, and every day we become 
more interdependent. Times have changed 
since the cave-dwelling days when every man 
was his own butcher, baker, judge, jury, and 
executioner; when no man attempted more than 
he could do alone, and therefore regarded every 
other man as his natural enemy and rival, the 
killing of whom was good business. Coopera- 
tion began when men found that two men could 
hunt better than one, and so one drove the bear 
out of the cave and the other one killed him as 
he went past the gap, and then divided him, 
fifty-fifty. That was the beginning of coopera- 
tion, which is built on faith. Strange, is n't it, 
that at this time, when we need each other so 
badly, we are not kinder to each other.'' Our 
national existence depends upon all of us — we 
have pooled our interests, everything we have 
is in danger, everything we have must be 
mobilized for its defense. 
223 



The Next of Kin 

Danger such as we are facing should drive 
the petty httle meannesses out of us, one would 
think, and call out all the latent heroism of our 
people. People talk about this being the 
Church's day of opportunity. So it is, for the 
war is teaching us ethical values, which has 
always been a difficult matter. We like things 
that we can see, lay out, and count! But the 
war has changed our appraisement of things, 
both of men and of nations. A country may be 
rich in armies, ships, guns, and wealth, and yet 
poor, naked, and dishonored in the eyes of 
the world; a country may be broken, desolate, 
shell-riven, and yet have a name that is honor- 
able in all the earth. So with individuals. We 
have set too high a value on property and 
wealth, too low an estimate on service. 

Our ideas of labor have been wrong. Labor 
to us has meant something disagreeable, which. 
If we endure patiently for a season, we may 
then be able to "chuck." Its highest reward 
is to be able to quit it — to go on the retired 
list. 

"Mary married well," declared a proud 
224 



The Believing Church 

mother, "and now she does not Hft a hand to 
anything." 

Poor Mary! What a slow time she must 
have! 

The war is changing this; people are suddenly 
stripped of their possessions, whether they be 
railroad stock, houses, or lands, or, like that of 
a poor fellow recently tried for vagrancy here, 
whose assets were found to be a third interest 
in a bear. It does not matter — the wealthy 
slacker is no more admired than the poor one. 
Money has lost its purchasing quality when it 
comes to immunity from responsibility. 

The coordination of our people has begun, 
the forces of unity are working; but they are 
still hindered by the petty little jealousies and 
disputes of small people who do not yet under- 
stand the seriousness of the occasion. So long 
as church bodies spend time fighting about 
methods of baptism, and call conventions to 
pass resolutions against church union, which 
would unquestionably add to the effectiveness 
of the Church and enable it to make greater 
headway against the powers of evil ; so long as 

225 



The Next of Kin 

the channels through which God's love should 
flow to the people are so choked with denomi- 
national prejudice, it is not much wonder that 
many people are experiencing a long, dry spell, 
bitterly complaining that the fountain has gone 
dry. Love, such as Christ demonstrated, is the 
only hope of this sin-mad world. When the 
Church shows forth that love and leads the 
people to see that the reservoirs of love in the 
mountains of God are full to overflowing, and 
every man can pipe the supply into his own 
heart and live victoriously, abundantly, glori- 
ously, as God intended us all to live, then it will 
come about that the sword will be beaten into 
the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning- 
hook, and the Lord will truly hear our prayer 
and heal our land. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE LAST RESERVES 

To-day I read in one of our newspapers an 
account of a religious convention which is going 
on in our city. It said that one of the lady 
delegates asked if, in view of the great scarcity 
of men to take the various fields, and the in- 
creased number of vacancies, the theological 
course in their colleges would be opened to 
women? And the report said, "A ripple of 
amusement swept over the convention." 

I know that ripple. I know it well! The 
Church has always been amused when the 
advancement of women has been mentioned 
right out boldly like that. There are two things 
which have never failed to bring a laugh — a 
great, round, bold oath on the stage, and any 
mention of woman suffrage in the pulpit. They 
have been sure laugh-producers. When we pray 
for the elevation of the stage in this respect, 
we should not forget the Church! 

227 



The Next of Kin 

I have been trying to analyze that ripple of 
amusement. Here is the situation: The men 
have gone out to fight. The college halls are 
empty of boys, except very young ones. One of 
the speakers at the same session said, "We do 
not expect to get in boys of more than eighteen 
years of age." Churches are closed for lack of 
preachers. What is to be done about it.'' No 
longer can Brother M. be sent to England to 
bring over pink-cheeked boys to fill the ranks 
of Canada's preachers. The pink-cheeked ones 
are also "over there." There is no one to call 
upon but women. So why was the suggestion 
of the lady delegate received with amusement.^ 
Why was it not acted upon J For although there 
were many kind and flattering things said about 
women, their great services to Church and 
State, yet the theological course was not 
opened. 

The Church has been strangely blind in its 
attitude toward women, and with many women 
it will be long remembered with a feeling of bit- 
terness that the Church has been so slow to 
move. 

228 



The Last Reserves 

The Government of the Western Provinces of 
Canada gave full equality to women before that 
right was given by the Church. The Church 
has not given it yet. The Church has not meant 
to be either unjust or unkind, and the indiffer- 
ence and apathy of its own women members 
have given the unthinking a reason for their 
attitude. Why should the vote be forced on 
women? they have asked. It is quite true that 
the women of the Church have not said much, 
for the reason that many of the brightest 
women, on account of the Church's narrowness, 
have withdrawn and gone elsewhere, where more 
liberty could be found. This is unfortunate, 
and I think a mistake on the part of the women. 
Better to have stayed and fought it out than 
to go out slamming the door. 

Many sermons have I listened to in the last 
quarter of a century of fairly regular church 
attendance; once I heard an Englishman 
preaching bitterly of the Suflfragettes' militant 
methods, and he said they should all "be con- 
demned to motherhood to tam.e their wild 
spirits." And I surely had the desire to slam 
229 



The Next of Kin 

the door that morning, for I thought I never 
heard a more terrible insult to all womankind 
than to speak of motherhood as a punishment. 
But I stayed through the service; I stayed after 
the service! I interviewed the preacher. So 
did many other women! He had a chastened 
spirit when we were through with him. 

I have listened to many sermons that I did 
not like, but I possessed my soul in patience. 
I knew my turn would come — it is a long lane 
that has no tomato-cans! My turn did come — 
I was invited to address the conference of the 
Church, and there with all the chief offend- 
ers lined up in black-coated, white-collared 
rows, I said all that was in my heart, and they 
were honestly surprised. One good old brother, 
who I do not think had listened to a word that 
I said, arose at the back of the church and said : 
" I have listened to all that this lady has had to 
say, but I am not convinced. I have it on good 
authority that in Colorado, where women vote, 
a woman once stuffed a ballot-box. How can 
the lady explain that.^" I said I could explain 
it, though, indeed, I could not see that it 

230 



The Last Reserves 

needed any explanation. No one could expect 
women to live all their lives with men without 
picking up some of their little ways! That 
seemed to hold the brother for a season ! 

The Church's stiff attitude toward women 
has been a hard thing to explain to the "world." 
Many a time I have been afraid that It would 
be advanced as a reason for not considering 
woman suffrage In the State. "If the Church," 
politicians might well have said, "with Its 
spiritual understanding of right and justice, 
cannot see Its way clear to give the vote to 
women, why should the State Incur the risk.'"' 
Whenever I have Invited questions, at the close 
of an address, I have feared that one. That 
cheerful air of confidence with which I urged 
people to speak right up and ask any question 
they wished always covered a trembling and 
fearful heart. You have heard of people whis- 
tling as they passed a graveyard, and perhaps 
you thought that they were frivolously light- 
hearted ? Oh, no ! That is not why they whis- 
tled! 

When the vote was given to tlie women in 
231 



The Next of Kin 

our province and all the other Western prov- 
inces, I confess that I thought our worst 
troubles were over. I see now that they were 
really beginning. A second Hindenburg line 
has been set up, and seems harder to pierce 
than the first. It is the line of bitter prejudice! 
Some of those who, at the time the vote was 
given, made eloquent speeches of welcome, 
declaring their long devotion to the cause of 
women, are now busily engaged in trying to 
make it uncomfortably hot for the women who 
dare to enter the political field. They are like 
the employers who furnish seats for their clerks 
in the stores, yet make it clear that to use them 
may cost their jobs. 

The granting of the franchise to women in 
western Canada, was brought about easily. It 
won, not by political pressure, but on its mer- 
its. There Is something about a new country 
which beats out prejudice, and the pioneer age 
is not so far removed as to have passed out of 
memory. The real men of the West remember 
gratefully how the women stood by them in the 
old hard days, taking their full share of the 

232 



The Last Reserves 

hardships and the sacrifice uncomplainingly. 
It was largely this spirit which prompted the 
action of the legislators of the West. As 
Kipling says : — 

Now and not hereafter, while the breath is in our 

nostrils, 
Now and not hereafter, ere the meaner years go by, 
Let us now remember many honorable women — 
They who stretched their hands to us, when we were 

like to die! 

There was not any great opposition here in 
western Canada. One member did say that, 
if women ever entered Parliament, he would 
immediately resign; but the women were not 
disturbed. They said that it was just another 
proof of the purifying effect that the entrance 
of women into politics would have! Sitting in 
Parliament does not seem like such a hard job 
to those of us who have sat in the Ladles' 
Gallery and looked over; there is such una- 
nimity among members of Parliament, such 
remarkable and unquestioning faith in the 
soundness of their party's opinion. In one of 
the Parliaments of the West there sat for twelve 
years an honored member who .never once 

23^ 



The Next of Kin 

broke the silence of the back benches except to 
say, "Aye," when he was told to say, "A}-e." 
But on toward the end of the thirteenth year 
he gave unmistakable signs of life. A window 
had been left open behind him, and when the 
draft blew over him — he sneezed! Shortly 
after, he got up and shut the window! 

Looking down upon such tranquil scenes as 
these there are women who have said in their 
boastful way that they believe they could do 
just as well — with a little practice! 

Women who sit in Parliament will do so by 
sheer merit, for there is still enough prejudice 
to keep them out if any reason for so doing can 
be found. Their greatest contribution, in Par- 
liament and out of it, will be independence of 
thought. 

Women have not the strong party affiliations 
which men have. They have no political past, 
no political promises to keep, no political sins 
to expiate. They start fair and with a clean 
sheet. Those who make the mistake of falling 
into old party lines, and of accepting ready- 
made opinions and prejudices, will make no 

234 



The Last Reserves 

difference in the political life of the country 
except to enlarge the voters' list and increase 
the expenses of elections. 

Just now partyism is falling into disfavor, for 
there are too many serious questions to be 
fought out. There are still a few people who 
would rather lose the war than have their party 
defeated, but not many. "When the Empire is 
in danger is no time to think of men," appeals 
to the average thinking man and woman. 
The independent man who carefully thinks out 
issues for himself, and who is not led away by 
election cries, is the factor who has held things 
steady in the past. Now it seems that this inde- 
pendent body will be increased by the new 
voters, and if so, they will hold in their hands 
the balance of power in any province, and really 
become a terror to evil-doers as well as a praise 
to those who do well ! 

Old things are passing away, and those who 
have eyes to see it know that all things are 
becoming new. The political ideals of the far- 
oif, easy days of peace will not do for these new 
and searching times. Political ideals have been 

235 



The Next of Kin 

-difFerent from any other. Men who would not 
rob a bank or sandbag a traveler, and who are 
quite punctilious about paying their butcher 
and their baker, have been known to rob the 
country quite freely and even hilariously, doc- 
toring an expense sheet, overcharging for any 
service rendered. "Good old country," they 
have seemed to say, "if I do not rob you, some 
one else will!" 

This easy conscience regarding the treasury 
of the country is early shown in the attitude 
toward road-work, those few days' labor which 
the municipality requires men to do as part 
payment of their taxes. Who has not noticed 
the languorous ease of the lotus-eating road- 
workers as they sit on their plough-handles 
and watch the slow afternoon roll by.'' 
i- Politics too long has been a mystical word 
which has brought visions of a dark but fasci- 
nating realm of romantic intrigue, sharp deals, 
good-natured tricks, and lucky strikes. The 
greatest asset a politician can have is the ability 
to "put it over" and "get something for us." 
The attitude of the average voter has been that 

236 



The Last Reserves 

of expectancy. If he renders a public service, he 
expects to be remunerated. His relation to his 
country has not been, "What can I do.'*" but,. 
"What can I get?" His hand has been out- 
stretched palm upward! Citizenship to us has 
not meant much; it has come too easy, like 
money to the rich man's son! All things have 
been ours by inheritance — free speech, free- 
dom of religion, responsible government. Some- 
body fought for these things, but it was a long 
time ago, and only in a vague way are we grate- 
ful! These things become valuable only when 
threatened. 

There hangs on the wall, in one of the mis- 
sions in the city of Winnipeg, a picture of a 
street in one of the Polish villages. In it the 
people are huddled together, cowering with 
fear. The priest, holding aloft the sacred cruci- 
fix, stands in front of them, while down the 
street come the galloping Cossacks with rifles 
and bayonets. Polish men and women have 
cried bitter tears before that picture. They 
knew what happened. They knew that the 
sacred sign of the crucifix did not stay the fury 

237 



The Next of Kin 

of the Cossacks! These are the people, these 
PoHsh people, who have been seen to kiss the 
soil of Canada in an ecstasy of gladness when 
they set foot upon it, for it is to them the land 
of liberty. Liberty of speech and of action, 
safety of life and of property mean something 
to them; but we have always enjoyed these 
things, and esteem them lightly. 

The first blow between the eyes that our 
complacency received was Belgium! — that 
heroic little country to whose people citizenship 
was so much dearer than life or riches, or even 
the safety of their loved ones, that they flung 
all these things away, in a frenzy of devotion, 
for the honor of their country and her good 
name among nations. This has disturbed us: 
we cannot forget Belgium. It has upset our 
comfortable Canadian conscience, for it has 
given us a glimpse of the upper country, and 
life can never be the same again. It is not all of 
life to live — that is, grow rich and quit work. 

The heroism of the trenches is coming back 
to us. It is filtering through. It is the need for 
heroism which is bringing it out. We are play- 

238 



The Last Reserves 

ing a losing game, even though we are winning. 
There is only one thing more disastrous than a 
victory, and that is a defeat. I do not need to 
enumerate what we are losing — we know. 
What can we do to make good the loss ^ Some 
of our people have always done all they could: 
they have always stood in the front trench and 
"carried on"; others have been in the "stand- 
to" trench, and have done well, too, in time of 
stress. Many have not yet signed on, but they 
will: they are not cowards, they are only indif- 
ferent. This has been true of the protected 
woman in the home, who has not considered 
herself a citizen. 

We have come to the place now when our 
full force must be called out. The women are 
our last reserves. If they cannot heal the world, 
we are lost, for they are the last we have — we 
cannot call the angels down. The trumpets are 
calling now in every street of every town, in 
every country lane, even in the trackless fast- 
nesses of the North Country. The call is for 
citizens, — woman citizens, — who, with deft 
and skillful fingers, will lovingly, patiently 

239 



The Next of Kin 

undertake the task of piecing together the 
torn mantle of civiHzation; who will make it 
so strong, so beautiful, so glorified, that never 
again can it be torn or soiled or stained with 
human blood. The trumpets are calling for 
healers and binders who will not be appalled 
at the task of nursing back to health a wounded 
world, shot to pieces by injustice, greed, cru- 
elty, and wrong thinking. 

The sign of the Red Cross is a fitting emblem 
for the Order, worn not only on the sleeve, but 
in the heart; red to remind its wearer that God 
made all people of one blood, and is the Father 
of all; and the Cross which speaks of the One 
whose mission on earth was to save; who came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister. 
Every one who signs on does so for "duration," 
and must consider herself under orders until 
the coming in of that glad day 

"When men shall brothers be 
And form one family 
The wide world o'er!" 



CHAPTER XV 

LIFE'S TRAGEDY 

It often happens that people die 

At the hand of that they loved the best; 

One who loves horses all his days 
By a horse's hoof is laid to rest! 

The swimmer who loves on the waves to lie 
Is caught in the swell of a passing boat, 

And the thing he loves breaks over his head 
And chokes the breath from his gasping throat. 

And the Christ who loved all men so well 
That he came to earth their friend to be, 

By one was denied, by one betrayed, 
By others nailed to the cursed tree! 

And more and more I seem to see 
That Love is the world's great Tragedy! 

Love is a terrible thing — quite different 
from amiability, which is sometimes confused 
with it. Amiability will never cause people to 
do hard things, but love will tear the heart to 
pieces! 

It was because the people of Belgium loved 
their country that they chose to suffer all 
things rather than have her good name tar- 
nished among the nations of the earth. It has 
241 



The Next of Kin 

been for love, love of fair play, love of British 
traditions, that Canada has sent nearly four 
hundred thousand men across the sea to fight 
against the powers of darkness. Canada has 
nothing to gain in this struggle, in a material 
way, as a nation, and even less has there been 
any chance of gain to the individual who an- 
swered the call. There are many things that 
may happen to the soldier after he has put on 
the uniform, but sudden riches is not among 
them. 

Some of the men, whose love of country made 
them give up all and follow the gleam, have 
come back to us now, and on pleasant after- 
noons may be seen sitting on the balconies of 
the Convalescent Homes or perhaps being 
wheeled in chairs by their more fortunate com- 
panions. Their neighbors, who had an amiable 
feeling for the country instead of love, and who 
therefore stayed at home, are very sorry for 
these broken men, and sometimes, when the 
day is fine, they take the "returned men" out 
in their big cars for a ride! 

There are spiritual and moral dead-beats in 
242 



Life's Tragedy 

every community who get through life easily 
by following a "safety-first" plan in everything, 
who keep close to the line of "low visibility," 
which means, "Keep your head down or you 
may get hit"; who allow others to do the fight- 
ing and bear all the criticism, and then are not 
even gracious enough to acknowledge the un- 
earned benefits. The most popular man in 
every community is the one who has never 
taken a stand on any moral question ; who has 
never loved anything well enough to fight for 
it;'who is broad-minded and tolerant — because 
he does not care. . . . Amiability fattens, but 
love kills! 

Amiable patriots at the present time talk 
quite cheerfully of the conscription of life, but 
say little of the conscription of wealth, declar- 
ing quite truthfully that wealth will never win 
the war! Neither will men! It will take both, 
and all we have, too, I am afraid. Surely if the 
government feels that it can ask one man for 
his life, it need not be so diffident about asking 
another man for his wealth. The conscription 
of wealth might well begin with placing all 

243 



The Next of Kin 

articles of food and clothing on the free list and 
levying a direct tax on all land values. Then, 
if all profits from war-supplies were turned over 
to the government, there would be money 
enough to pay a fair allowance to our soldiers 
and their dependents. It does not seem fair 
that the soldier should bear all the sacrifices of 
hardship and danger, and then have the addi- 
tional one of poverty for his family and the 
prospect of it for himself, when he comes back 
unfit for his former occupation. Hardship and 
danger for the soldier are inevitable, but pov- 
erty is not. The honest conscription of wealth 
would make it possible for all who serve the 
Empire to have an assurance of a decent living 
as long as they live. 

If equal pay were given to every man, whether 
he is a private or a major, equal pensions 
to every soldier's widow, and if all political 
preference were eliminated, as it would have 
to be under this system; when all service is 
put on the same basis and one man's life counts 
as much as another's, there would be no need of 
compulsion to fill the ranks of the Canadian 

244 



Life's Tragedy 

army. We know that there never can be equal- 
ity of service — the soldier will always bear the 
heavy burden, and no money can ever pay him 
for what he does; but we must not take refuge 
behind that statement to let him bear the bur- 
dens which belong to the people who stay at 
home. 

Heroism Is contagious. It becomes easier 
when every one is practicing It. What we need 
now, more than anything, are big, strong, heroic 
leaders, men of moral passion, who will show us 
the hard path of sacrifice, not asking us to do 
what they are not willing to do themselves; not 
pointing the way, but traveling In it; men of 
heroic mould who will say, "If my right eye 
offend me, I will pluck It out"; men who are 
willing to go down to political death If the coun- 
try can be saved by that sacrifice. We need 
men at home who are as brave as the boys In 
the trenches, who risk their lives every day In a 
dozen different ways, without a trace of self- 
applause, who have laid all their equipment on 
the altar of sacrifice; who "carry on" when all 
seems hopeless; who stand up to death un- 

245 



The Next of Kin 

flinchlngly, and at the last, ask only, that their 
faces may be turned to the West! — to Canada! 
We have always had plenty of amiability, but 
in this terrible time it will not do. Our country 
is calling for love. 



CHAPTER XVI 

WAITING! 

Sing a song of the Next of Kin, 
A weary, wishful, waiting rhyme, 

That has no tune and has no time, 
But just a way of wearing in! 

Sing a song of those who weep 

While slow the weary night hours go; 

Wondering if God willed it so, 

That human life should be so cheap! 

Sing a song of those who wait. 

Wondering what the post will bring; 

Saddened when he slights the gate, 
Trembling at his ring, — 

The day the British mail comes in 
Is a day of thrills for the Next of Kin. 

When the Alpine climbers make a dangerous 
ascent, they fasten a rope from one to the other; 
so that if one slips, the others will be able to 
hold him until he finds his feet again; and thus 
many a catastrophe is averted ! We have a ring 
like that here — we whose boys are gone. 
Somebody Is almost sure to get a letter when 
the British mail comes in; and even a letter 

m 



The Next of Kin 

from another boy read over the 'phone is cheer- 
ing, especially if he mentions your boy — or 
even if he does n't; for we tell each other that 
the writer of the letter would surely know "if 
anything had happened." 

Even "Posty " does his best to cheer us when 
the letters are far apart, and when the British 
mail has brought us nothing tells us it was a 
very small, and, he is sure, divided mail, and 
the other part of it will be along to-morrow. 
He also tells us the U-boats are probably 
accounting for the scarcity of French mail, any- 
way, and we must not be worried. He is a good 
fellow, this "Posty"! 

We hold tight to every thread of comfort — 
we have to. That's why we wear bright- 
colored clothes: there is a buoyancy, an assur- 
ance about them, that we sorely need ! We try 
to economize on our emotions, too, never shed- 
ding a useless or idle tear! In the days of peace 
we could afford to go to see "East Lynne," 
"Madame X," or "Romeo and Juliet," and 
cry our eyes red over their sorrows. Now we 
must go easy on all that! Some of us are run- 

248 



Waiting! 

ning on the emergency tank now, and there Is 
still a long way to go! 

There are some things we try not to think 
about, especially at night. There Is no use — 
we have thought It all over and over again; and 
now our brains act like machines which have 
been used for sewing something too heavy for 
them, and which don't "feed" just right, and 
skip stitches. So we try to do the things that 
we think ought to be done, and take all the 
enjoyment we can from the day's work. 

We have learned to divide our time Into day- 
lengths, following the plan of the water-tight 
compartments In ships, which are so arranged 
that, if a leak occurs In one of these, the dam- 
aged ^one may be closed up, and no harm Is 
done to the ship. So It Is In life. We can live 
so completely one day at a time that no mourn- 
ful yesterday can throw Its dull shadow on the 
sunshine of to-day; neither can any frowning 
to-morrow reach back and with a black hand 
slap Its smiling face. To-day Is a sacred thing 
if we know how to live it. 

I am writing this on the fourth day of Au- 
249 



The Next of Kin 

gust, which is a day when memory grows bitter 
and reflective if we are not careful. The August 
sunshine lies rich and yellow on the fields, and 
almost perceptibly the pale green of the wheat 
is absorbing the golden hue of the air. The 
painted cup has faded from rosy pink to a dull, 
ashy color, and the few wild roses which are 
still to be seen in the shaded places have paled 
to a pastel shade. The purple and yellow of 
goldenrod, wild sage, gallardia, and coxcomb 
are to be seen everywhere — the strong, bold 
colors of the harvest. 

Everything spoke of peace to-day as we drove 
through the country. The air had the inde- 
scribably sweet smell of ripening grain, clover- 
blooms, and new hay; for the high stands of 
wild hay around the ponds and lakes are all 
being cut this year, and even the timothy along 
the roads, and there was a mellow undertone of 
mowing machines everywhere, like the distant 
hum of a city. Fat cattle stood knee-deep in a 
stream as we passed, and others lay contentedly 
on the clover-covered banks. One restless 
spirit, with a poke on her neck, sniffed at us as 

250 



Waiting! 

we went by, and tossed her head in grim defi- 
ance of pubHc opinion and man-made laws. 
She had been given a bad name — and was 
going to Hve up to it! 

Going over a hill, we came upon a woman 
driving a mower. It was the first reminder of 
the war. She was a fine-looking woman, with 
a tanned face, brown, but handsome, and she 
swung her team around the edge of the meadow 
with a grace and skill that called forth our ad- 
miration. 

I went over and spoke to her, for I recognized 
her as a woman whom I had met at the Farm- 
Woman's Convention last winter. After we 
had exchanged greetings, and she had made her 
kind inquiry, "What news do you get from the 
Front?" and had heard that my news had been 
good — she said abruptly: — 

"Did you know I've lost my husband?" 

I expressed my sorrow. 

"Yes," she said, "it was a smashing blow — 
I never believed Alex could be killed : he was 
so big, and strong, and could do anything. . . . 
Ever since I can remember, I thought Alex was 

251 



The Next of Kin 

the most wonderful of all people on earth . . . 
and at first . . . when the news came, It seemed 
I could not go on living . . . but I am all right 
now, and have thought things out. . . . This 
Is n't the only plane of existence . . . there are 
others; this Is merely one phase of life. ... I 
am taking a longer view of things now. . . . 
You see that schoolhouse over there," — she 
pointed with her whip to a green-and-white 
school farther down the road, -—"Alex and I 
went to school there. . . . We began the same 
day and left the same day. His family and 
mine settled in this neighborhood twenty years 
ago — we are all Kincardine people — Bruce, 
you know. Our road to school lay together on 
the last mile . . . and we had a way of telling 
whether the other one had passed. We had a 
red willow stick which we drove Into the ground. 
Then, when I came along In the morning and 
found it standing, I knew I was there first. I 
pulled it out and laid it down, so when Alex 
came he knew I had passed, and hurried along 
after me. When he came first and found it 
standing, he always waited for me, if he could, 

252 



Waiting! 

for he would rather be late than go without me. 
When I got the message I could not think of 
anything but the loneliness of the world, for a 
few days; but after a while I realized what it 
meant. . . . Alex had passed . . . the willow 
was down . . . but he '11 wait for me some place 
. . . nothing is surer than that! I am not lonely 
now. . . . Alex and I are closer together than 
plenty of people who are living side by side. 
Distance Is a matter of spirit . . . like every- 
thing else that counts. 

"I am getting on well. The children are at 
school now, both of them, — they sit in the 
same seats we sat in, — the crops are In good 
shape — did you ever see a finer stand of wild 
hay? I can manage the farm, with one extra 
hired man In harvest-time. Alex went out on 
the crest of the wave — he had just been re- 
commended for promotion — the children will 
always have a proud memory. 

"This Is a great country. Is n't it.^ Where 
can you find such abundance, and such a cli- 
mate, with Its sunshine and Its cool nights, and 
such a chance to make good.f* ... I suppose 
253 



The Next of Kin 

freedom has to be paid for. We thought the 
people long ago had paid for it, but another 
installment of the debt fell due. Freedom is 
like a farm — it has to be kept up. It is worth 
something to have a chance to work and bring 
up my children — in peace — so I am living on 
from day to day . . . not grieving . . . not mop- 
ing . . . not thinking too much, — it hurts to 
think too hard, — just living." 

Then we shook hands, and I told her that 
she had found something far greater than hap- 
piness, for she had achieved power! 

There is a fine rainbow In the sky this even- 
ing, so bright and strong that it shows again 
in a reflected bow on the clouds behind It. A 
rainbow Is a heartsome thing, for it reminds us 
of a promise made long ago, and faithfully kept. 

There is shadow and shine, sorrow and joy, 
all the way along. This is inevitable, and so 
we must take them as they come, and rejoice 
over every sunny hour of every day, or, If the 
day is all dark, we must go hopefully forward 
through the gloom. 

254 



Waiting! 

Today has been fine. There was one spat- 
tering shower, which pebbled the dusty roads, 
and a few crashes of rolHng thunder. But the 
western sky is red now, giving promise of a good 
day to-morrow. 



A PRAYER FOR THE NEXT OF KIN 

O Thou, who once Thine own Son gave 

To save the world from sin, 
Draw near in pity now we crave 

To all the Next of Kin. 
To Thee we make our humble prayer 
To save us from despair! 

Send sleep to all the hearts that wake; 

Send tears into the eyes that burn; 
Steady the trembling hands that shake; 

Comfort all hearts that mourn. 
But most of all, dear Lord, we pray 
For strength to see us through this day. 

As in the wilderness of old, 

When Thou Thy children safely led, 
They gathered, as we have been told. 

One day^s supply of heavenly bread, 
And if they gathered more than that, 
At evening it was stale and fiat, — 

So, Lord, may this our faith increase — 
To leave, untouched, to-morrow's load, 

To take of grace a one-day lease 
Upon life's winding road. 

Though round the bend we may not see, 

Still let us travel hopefully I 

256 



A Prayer for the Next of Kin 

Or, if our faith is still so small — 
Our hearts so void of heavenly grace^ 

That we may still affrighted be 
In passing some dark place — 

Then in Thy mercy let us run 
Blindfolded in the race. 



THE END 



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